


eighteen wheels on an uphill climb

by blackeyedblonde



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Truckers, Americana, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Banter, Blood and Violence, Brief Instance of Prostitution, Eventual Romance, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Gentle Sex, Happy Ending, Human Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mixed POV, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-07-23 10:49:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 91,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16157507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: Hank is going to die. He’s going to die right here in Kentucky, 53 years old, halfway to broke, and tragically sober. Survived only by a nine-year-old St. Bernard and the 31-year-old twink who delivered the fatal blow.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, this started out as an idea pitch I originally posted [on tumblr](https://honkforhankcon.tumblr.com/post/178264337349/this-is-super-niche-but-i-was-thinking-about-an-au), which in turn got a lot more attention than I anticipated and eventually generated some [AMAZING art](https://hannor-reed900.tumblr.com/post/178326698172/i-couldnt-get-the-truck-driverhank) by the talented hannor-reed900 (who has also very graciously agreed to beta read for me). From there it's been a feverish haze of googling trucker slang and questioning my life choices, but I guess we're buckling down and really doing this thing. 
> 
> Please be advised that the first chapter deals with prostitution, brief mentions of off-screen underage prostitution, some pretty graphic physical violence, and the usage of some slurs. There will be other instances of physical/vocal violence at the hands of original secondary characters in later updates but the prostitution (mostly) ends here and we're now on the slow climb uphill toward something better, so hold tight! Additional tags will be added as they become relevant. Thanks!

 

   
The rain starts falling faster a few minutes past 3 A.M., gathering in wide, black pools on the craggy asphalt. Connor sucks the last drag off one of the two cigs he’d bummed off a john in Savannah and flicks the singed butt into an ash receptacle by the service station door. He holds the smoke in his lungs until it burns like fire and then hunches down deeper into his damp hoodie, fingers already itching for his lighter again. He pulls his flip phone from a pocket and checks the time instead, silently willing the minutes to move faster.

Connor watches blue and purple neon from the station windows swirl into the dirty rainwater and pats the small wad of cash hidden in the lining of his sweatshirt to make sure it’s still there. It always is—although dwindling by the day now—, but prickling paranoia usually gets the best of him. The grimy backpack slung over his shoulder only holds the barest necessities: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, a comb, a half-dozen condoms he’d grabbed from a fishbowl at a clinic somewhere in Florida, and some spare clothes in varying states of cleanliness. Nothing that couldn’t be replaced if it was taken from him.

There’s a row of big rigs parked out in the overnight lot adjacent to the station and all but one has gone dark with their windows drawn and shaded. Before the storm drummed up into something nasty, Connor had sat there and watched the orange tip of another cigarette flare in the dark cab of the idling truck, burning like a pinch of fired garnet in the distance.

As he watched he knew he was being watched in return.

Connor’s already sucked his fair share of cock this week, none of it exceptionally pleasant, and isn’t too keen on adding another to the tally tonight. Saliva floods into his mouth at the mere thought and he fucking hates it, but it’s either that or stay out in the rain until dawn when he can hitch another ride north. And by the looks of the horse-faced clerk inside, he’s about twenty minutes away from having the cops show up to bust his balls for loitering. So much for small town southern gentility.

The one truck still lit up and idling may as well be an open invitation, and it’s worth a shot, so Connor throws his hood up and darts out into the rain. Water splashes up around his ankles and soaks his sneakers and jeans through within seconds, but it’ll be worth the discomfort if he can squirrel his way into a warm cab until daybreak. Let some old duffer jizz on his chest, call him a candy-ass faggot while his lips are wrapped around his cock, maybe slap him around some. Standard fare. So long as he gets their money in the end, Connor’s willing to play whatever game needs playing.

Long since fallen into a routine, he hurries past the other three silent sleepers and grabs the handle on the side of the rig to haul himself up on the running board. Bites into his bottom lip to plump it up when he’s faced with the dark window, knowing full well whoever’s on the other side can see him just fine.

He raps twice on the glass, wonders if he should flash the condom in his pocket to get the point across or wait it out. “Looking for a bunk buddy?” he asks, trying to sound coy even though he looks like a drowned rat in the rain, breath already fogging on the glass. When that doesn’t work he pushes his hood back and brings things straight down to business. “Open up and I’ll suck you off real nice for a twenty.”

The truck hisses and settles and Connor jumps a little when the door clicks open from the other side. It’s not exactly relief that washes over him alongside the rain but he’ll have to take it in stride for now, and without any more hesitation he swings into the passenger side of the cab and latches the door shut behind him.

Rain beats the roof of the rig like a drum and Connor wedges his backpack down between his feet before he gets a good look at his newest customer, still smoking at leisure in the driver’s seat. He’s a middle-aged man, probably on the outskirts of his forties now, jaw rough with unkempt and patchy stubble. His clothes look unsoiled enough if a little creased and rumpled, but that’s life on the road for you. The one thing Connor notices right away is that the man’s wearing a tattered cowboy hat and he’s got something black stained around the cuticles of his fingernails. In every other way his face is almost immediately forgettable.

“Twenty seems awfully steep for one little blow,” the man says by way of greeting. Doesn’t offer his name or kin or country, just blows a thin curl of smoke up into the air. The whole cab reeks of it.

“You haven’t been blown by me before,” Connor counters, reaching up to push damp hair out of his eyes. “Show me the money and maybe I’ll throw in a little something for free.”

The brim of the man’s hat dips as he looks down to put out his cigarette in an empty chaw can wedged in the center console. “Lot lizards aren’t usually as young and pretty as you,” he says. The tone of his voice makes the backs of Connor’s arms prickle but he passes the feeling off as a chill from the rain. “How generous you feeling tonight?”

“That depends on your own hospitality,” Connor says, forcing himself to flash a cheeky grin. “What do you say?”

His customer points back toward the sleeper bunk behind them with a grimy thumb and a tilt of his chin. “Get on back there.”

Connor does, and waits as the man slides back to sit on the unmade bunk where everything smells like sweat and sour gym socks. He doesn’t remove his hat or make any move to undress himself, and when Connor pauses for a moment he only thumps his belt buckle and grunts out, “What the fuck are you waiting on? It ain’t gonna suck itself.”

Connor lets out the barest whisper of a sigh but goes to work, hands moving by way of unfortunate muscle memory. He unbuckles the belt and unzips the fly on the man’s jeans, revealing the cheap and faded briefs underneath. His mind tends to go somewhere between waking and dreaming when he’s servicing his so-called clientele, almost as if he exists two inches to the right of his own body—a consciousness momentarily displaced and made transitory. In more contemplative moments Connor supposes it’s his brain trying to detach him from the situation at hand, but when you live and work on the road there’s not too much fucking time to go pussyfooting around things like trauma.

He palms the man’s dick through his underwear and feels it already hardening in his hand as he pulls it out into view and gives it a long stroke. He’s cut but nothing to write home to the boys about—Connor’s seen and serviced better, not that any of those guys mattered. Connor’s seen so many cocks they’re practically a dime a dozen. Even so, he’s still got a scrap of enough precaution left to remember his bag still sitting in the front seat and the condoms and a wet wipe inside. The taste of baby wipes is a whole hell of a lot better than the taste of unwashed dick.

“Do you mind if I grab something—” he starts to say, but closes his mouth real quick when the man curses a filthy blue streak and grabs hold of the front of his sweatshirt.

“Are you a fucking whore or not?” the man hisses, still holding Connor captive. “You either suck me off right now or you’ll be choking on my cock when I hold you down and skullfuck you myself.”

No powder-fresh dick tonight, then. “Okay,” Connor says lamely, a little shaken but not yet deterred. He tries to tell himself he’s heard and suffered worse, because he has, and that’s the last real surface thought he has before his mind promptly hits the elevator-stop button and he checks the fuck out.

There’s a familiar weight on his tongue, heavy and musky. The corners of his mouth are dry and pull tight as he hollows his cheeks out to accommodate the intrusion. Ragged breathing above him, filthy words he doesn’t quite register, the man’s hand fisting in his hair and forcing him down hard enough to trigger his gag reflex. Connor’s eyes are streaming but he doesn’t stop until things suddenly go still and there’s warm wetness on the side of his face—not tears, but the splatter of semen across his cheek and chin. May as well be the same damn thing.

The john pushes him up and away to start tucking himself back into his jeans, laughing as Connor reaches up to wipe at the mess on his face. “You suck cock like a little girl,” he says, getting up and heading toward the front of the cab. “I’ve had better blow jobs from a thirteen-year-old.”

Connor’s stomach well and truly tightens and rolls at that, and he honestly doesn’t even care about his fucking twenty dollar bill anymore, could care less if the cops come and drag him back to the drunk tank overnight—he just wants out, back under the deluge of torrential rain, and to forget he ever thought it’d be a good idea to get in this rig.

He glances at the truck door and regrets it the moment he does.

“Where do you think you’re headed?” the man asks. His voice is suspiciously soft this time, all of the bite and crudeness from before drained away. “It sure is a nasty storm out there.”

Connor looks at him, cum still smeared on his face, and dredges up every scrap of inner strength he can muster. “I’m leaving,” he says bluntly. “You can keep your money—I’m taking my bag and going now.”

“Going where?” the man asks. “Home?” And then he laughs again, low and reedy. Connor wants to throw up and swallows against the acid rising in the back of his throat. They’re about the same size in stature give or take a few pounds, and he considers standing up and shoving past the man’s frame just as there’s a metallic _fwip_ and something silver suddenly catches in the light between them.

“You can turn around and face the wall,” the man says. Connor’s brain is lagging, lagging, lagging, and then finally recognizes the thing in his hand as a six-inch switchblade. “Put your hands behind your back and don’t move or say a word.”  
  
Connor laughs because there’s nothing else he can do. He supposes this was inevitable at some point—his shitty luck would eventually run out and he’d get raped and murdered, chopped up in tiny pieces and dumped in a ditch somewhere, never to be seen or heard from again. Fucking figures. That’s how things go when you’ve got nothing left to lose.

He snorts and looks at the john like he’s just asked him to juggle chainsaws and tell dirty jokes in Latin. “Sorry, boss,” he says lightly, unable to stop the words rolling off his tongue too quickly to catch, “but that kinky shit will cost you extra.”

When the knife blade presses into the softness of his throat he only wishes he’d seen Amanda one last time, if only to tell her sorry.

“It wasn’t a request,” the man says, breath hot and acrid in Connor’s face. The pressure on the blade increases, centimeter by centimeter, until Connor feels the faintest, tiniest prick of warmth bloom and bead on his neck. “Put your fucking hands behind your back or I’ll do it for you and carve one of your fingers off to start.”

Connor lowers his eyes in the dim cab and draws in a deep breath. “Alright,” he says, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Alright.” He shifts slowly as he goes to turn, like his body is moving through deep water, and when he’s angled in such a way that the blade’s edge is no longer flush with his skin but only hovering above it, he ducks down and donkey kicks the heel of his right foot straight into the john’s stomach.

Time slips, stutters, and then dials up to full throttle. The switchblade goes up in the air and clatters somewhere on the rubber mat flooring. The man’s cowboy hat flies off his head when he folds in half to let the wind rush out of his lungs, and Connor gets halfway to the front of the cab when he feels a hand twist up in the fabric of his sweatshirt and yank him back so hard the material rips at the seam.

He stumbles, knocked off balance, and falls backward over the center console. The empty dip can full of cigarette ash goes flying and he’s suddenly looking straight up into the wild face of the man above him, and that’s the last thing he sees before pain explodes like a flash bomb in his skull.

Closed fists rain down on his face and shoulders for seconds that string together into a small eternity and it’s hard to do anything but lay there and take it. Connor’s forearms come up halfheartedly in some poor attempt to block the punches but barely do anything to stop them. His only real thought is that it’s a miracle the switchblade is still lost somewhere, temporarily forgotten and tumbled out of sight.

The man doesn’t speak, fueled only by primitive rage, deadly silent while he does his best to kill Connor with his bare hands. That’s Connor’s second thought, dawning on him slowly but with unshakeable certainty: he’s going to die, whether here or somewhere else later, if he doesn’t get out. This time his brain doesn’t shrug the notion off and away, and when the realization comes to full bodily fruition it courses through his veins and muscles like rampant wildfire.

He lashes out blindly and violently, trying to grapple for impossible leverage, and his fingertips skitter across the man’s face before he understands what he has to do. A hand wraps around his throat and tightens while the beatings continue to pummel his face raw, and Connor’s hands surge up again with the sole intention to find and rip his attacker’s eyeballs straight from his skull.

There’s a struggle and the edge of his right thumb finds something pliant and wet but he doesn’t stop even when teeth try to bite him through the fabric of his sweatshirt. Connor’s thumbs press deeper, digging and clawing like his life depends on it, and only when the fleshy resistance finally gives under his thumb with a sickening squelch does he hear a curdling scream. The punches stop all at once and Connor kicks out, flinging himself against the driver’s side door until his hand finds the lever and he rolls out onto the soaked pavement.

He gets back up and runs.

A moment later there’s a shout and a second set of pounding footfalls not too far behind him.

The rain is practically blinding but Connor staggers through it anyway, undiluted adrenaline making his body move and contort on its own accord, animalistic and ugly without his full control. For the first time in his whole fucked-up life he feels like prey, and no amount of leering and groping could’ve ever prepared him for the keen, instinctual awareness that he is being hunted.

The service station is lit up like a beacon through the downpour but Connor’s brain tells him it’s too far beyond the truck lot, he won’t make it with the blood streaming in his eyes. Either that or he’ll flee inside only to get himself and the night clerk both murdered in the bathroom while the phone hangs off the hook, 911 never quite dialed all the way through. It’s this thought that drives him to wild, irrational impulse, and in a moment of panic he darts around the last oil tanker in the lot and jerks open the driver’s side door to find it miraculously, blissfully, unlocked.

He’s yanked in headfirst by his shirtfront and gets pushed down into the floorboard almost instantly, a strong but warm hand held firm against the back of his neck. Later, when he reflects on this moment outside the margins of hysteria, Connor will remember the sensation of being shielded rather than trapped.

“Keep down and don’t move,” a low voice says from somewhere above him. The truck doors lock again and there’s the telltale click of a gun’s safety being thumbed off, but the figure overhead is looking out a thin part in the window shades and not at Connor, watching intently through the driving rain.

He does as he’s told for lack of any other choice, breathing hard with his face pressed into the rubber floor mat. It hurts, and he knows he’s bleeding everywhere, but that doesn’t explain the warm air puffing into his hair or the cold, wet nose that presses against his temple.

Connor blinks through the shadowed cab in disbelief, then twists around until he finds himself staring into the face of an enormous dog.

The dog stares back with droopy but kind eyes, expression mildly perplexed but by no means hostile. It snuffles Connor’s hair again and then licks once at the coppery blood on his face before letting out a low whine and getting up to shuffle further into the rear of the sleeper cab, no small feat considering its size. Connor unabashedly gapes at the animal and doesn’t even register that there’s a voice speaking to him until the hand on his neck slides over to his shoulder and shakes him a little.

“Do you know if he has a gun?”

“A what?” Connor mumbles, dazed. He feels like his ears are ringing even though he can make out every syllable of the man’s pleasantly rough tenor just fine.

“A gun, son—Christ! Does he have a fucking gun?”

“I don’t know,” Connor sputters, tasting iron in his mouth when the split in his lip weeps fresh blood. “He had a knife—a big knife, but he dropped it and I didn’t see a gun.”

“Good,” the second man murmurs, quieter this time. “We got a far better chance of fending off some prick with a knife than we do a gun.” There’s a small scuffle of movement while he quickly reaches down to help Connor sit up, propped against the console so his feet are nearly under the bunk.

Connor focuses on breathing through the busted mess of his nose, trying to slow the frenzied race of his heartbeat. His nameless savior hasn’t introduced himself yet, still peeking out between cracks in the rig’s makeshift night shutters for any signs of trespass.

“I don’t think anyone’s out there anymore,” he says. “But we’ll sit tight here for a minute to avoid rousing any suspicion.”

It’s only then that he thumbs the safety back on his gun and sets it up high on the dashboard, finally turning to peer at Connor’s hunched form through the dimly lit cab. “Hey, listen—you want me to go ahead and call the cops? I don’t know what the hell happened out there but I can’t imagine it was pretty.”

Connor’s face is bowed over, a drop or two of stray blood falling into his lap every few seconds. He raises his head to finally look up at the man speaking to him, and the eyes that meet his immediately widen in something verging on horror.

“Holy fucking shit,” he says. “Forget the cops, you need a fucking ambulance. What _the fuck_ —“

“No—don’t,” Connor says, gently wheezing around the words. He reaches up to try and wipe his soaked sleeve across his face, only smearing the blood and snot around more. “No cops. Won’t do me any good anyway.”

“The fuck it won’t,” the man says, going to dig around in his glove compartment until he comes back up with a wad of fast food napkins. “If you bleed out and die in my fucking rig it’ll be _my_ ass on the line, thank you very much.”

Connor shakes his head but accepts the napkins gingerly pressed into his palm. “Listen, man,” he says, voice gone pinched and nasally once he’s jammed some tissue up his nose. “I think we both know what I was doing in that rig before that guy decided he wanted to…do whatever he was going to do.”

Dizziness clouds his senses for a moment and Connor stops, measures his breathing until the wave of vertigo passes and tries again. “There’s no honest reason for me to be in that cab at 3:00 in the morning. They’ll pick me up for solicitation whether somebody beat the shit out of me or not, and I’m sure that fucker will be long gone by the time they even show.”

As if on cue, there’s the rumble and groan of one of the other trucks cranking up their diesel engine and letting up the breaks. The rig hisses as it starts to pull out of the lot and the man with Connor all but presses his eyeball to the window to watch it through the slowing rain.

“What color is it?” he asks.

“The red one,” Connor answers, closing his eyes. He manages to send up a silent prayer despite the pounding behind his eyes and waits to see whether or not it’ll be answered.

“ _Shit!_ I can’t make out the fucking plates or any decals on the side. Did you see what shipping company he’s contracted out of—does he own his own business?”

Connor shakes his head again and laughs even though it hurts. “Didn’t occur to me to look,” he says. “Suppose I’m in the business of tugging things other than trailers.”

His new companion sputters at that, expression screwed up into something twofold. He glances back out the window one last time and then collapses in his seat, the heavy bulk of his body going lax like all his puppet strings had been cut. “Well, he’s gone,” he says. “Sayonara. Good fucking riddance, I guess. Let’s hope you don’t die without an ID on a perp who just fled the scene scot-free.”

“I’m not going to die,” Connor says, weaker than he’d intended. He sags in more relief than defeat, and the giant dog chooses that moment to return from the rear of the sleeper again. This time his fluffy tail is wagging low and steady, and Connor sees just enough of the dog’s markings to decide that he’s a St. Bernard.

“Leave him alone, Sumo,” the man gently scolds. “He’s hurt and doesn’t need 180 pounds of lap dog crushing him to death.”

Connor brings a blood-stained hand up to curl in the dog’s shaggy side. “Nice to meet you, Sumo. I’m Connor.”

He looks expectantly up at the man still gawking at them in a mixture of shock and vague disbelief. Now that Connor’s eyes have adjusted more to the low light he can make out the silver of the man’s hair and the clipped beard along the curve of his jaw. Middle-aged, probably well over the hill, but bulky and broad and obviously still strong enough to hold his own plus some. He’d only been wearing a t-shirt and boxers when he pulled Connor into the truck, and there are few smudges of blood on the soft fabric now.

“Shit,” the man says abruptly. “Are we making introductions?”

“I know your dog’s name and you know mine,” Connor offers, trying not to let on that he can barely keep his head held up.  “Seems…appropriate.”

“Uh, well,” the man says, reaching around to palm the back of his neck. “You can call me Hank, I guess. Most people do.”

He squints at Connor and then quickly reaches up to flip on one of the cabin’s overhead lights, expression gone frantic again. “Hey, hey now— _nononono_ , you better stay awake! Don’t go anywhere, kid. Connor? Fuck— _Connor!_ ”

“Hank,” Connor says to himself, pleased with how the name feels in his mouth. It’s the last word he manages to get out before the world starts spinning and everything around them swirls into endless, peaceful darkness.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General warning for excessive foul language (are we surprised?) and some brief suicidal ideation. Connor also pukes and has had all-around very bad night.

 

When Connor opens his eyes again there’s a faint light shining nearby and something wet and syrupy-sweet on his face. And then, ever so slowly, a large figure leaning over to look at him from above. Connor’s heart jumps into his throat and he nearly screams before the features come into fuzzy focus and he recognizes Hank’s face, fine lines and creases deepened with worry.

“Oh, thank God,” Hank says, blowing out an endless sigh as he rakes a hand through his hair. “Thank fuck.”

“What happened?” Connor asks, trying to sit up but then deciding against it when his head starts to throb again. For some reason he can only breathe through his mouth and peers up at Hank from the sleeper’s floor. “Did I—”

“You passed out for a minute or two,” Hank says, voice strained with nerves. “I was getting ready to call 911 when you started moving around again.” The next part comes out more sheepishly, and Connor follows Hank’s line of sight to an empty Styrofoam cup that’s rolled under the bunk. “I didn’t know what to do so I, uh—threw a drink in your face.”

“A drink,” Connor deadpans.

“It was Cherry Coke,” Hank says mildly, and then, “Like they do in the fucking movies, alright? Maybe I panicked some and didn’t have water—can you blame me? I thought you were going belly-up there for a second.”

Connor blinks a few times and reaches up to gingerly touch his own face for the first time. The soda hadn’t done much to wash away any blood but had soaked through the napkins crammed in his nose. Connor pulls the makeshift plugs out and winces when they come away covered in a coagulated mess of blood, snot, and cherry cola. He doesn’t think his nose is broken but he’s sure as shit not looking forward to seeing his reflection in a mirror anytime soon. Everything on his face feels like it’s been bruised or scraped raw with steel wool.

Hank’s features screw up with some mixture of disgust and sympathy as he holds out a plastic shopping bag for Connor to throw the used napkins in. “I need to take you somewhere to get looked at,” he says, shaking his head. “Not to sit here and sugarcoat things, but you look like fucking hell. And that was before I threw the soda in your face.”

“I can take care of it,” Connor says, this time managing to sit up all the way with some grunting effort. Sumo starts panting happily from where he’s sprawled on the bottom bunk, tail thumping like a cane pole against the back wall. “If you point me in the direction of a 24-hour pharmacy that’d be a big help, then I can get out of your hair.”

“A twenty-four hour—?” Hank repeats loudly, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Get out of my fucking _hair?_ You just passed out five minutes ago and you still might have a concussion! Shit, kid, do you think I’m going to let you totter off at 4:00 in the morning in good conscience so you can fall over and croak in a ditch somewhere?”

Connor’s tongue darts out to press against the split in his bottom lip as he shrugs. He doesn’t know why this man named Hank and his giant fucking dog care so much, but it seems far too good to be true. There’s always a catch somewhere.

“Maybe you’d be doing me a favor,” Connor says, and then cows some when he realizes how that sounds caught in the air between them.

Hank almost looks hurt for a second, but the shadow quickly passes over his face like a veil come and gone. He bites into his bottom lip enough that Connor notices that there’s a gap between his two front teeth. It seems he wants to say something but ultimately lets the thought fetter away, replaced by a more neutral question. “How’d you know the truck door was unlocked?”

Connor blinks. “I didn’t,” he says truthfully. “I just opened it. How’d you know I was out there?”

“Sumo woke me up, crying and carrying on,” Hank says, nodding toward the dog. “Thought he had to go out for a leak. I said ‘fuck that shit, it’s raining cats and dogs out there,’ but then we saw you fall out of the other rig and start running. The other guy wasn’t far behind and went right after you.”

As far as Connor can tell, there’s no real rhyme or reason why Hank should’ve had any inclination to leave his truck unlocked or pull Connor inside—especially with two strange and bloodied men chasing each other around some seedy truck stop in the goddamn pouring rain. It was something straight out of a bad horror movie, except that it’d been real. And this time, somehow, there was somebody willing to help him instead of another monster hiding behind that unlocked door.

Connor doesn’t even realize he’s crying until Hank awkwardly shifts around and passes him another crumpled wad of fresh napkins. He looks away as if to give Connor some privacy in the small space they’re occupying, but when the crying only gets worse he slowly reaches out to stiffly pat his shoulder with a broad hand.

“Hey, c’mon now, it’s gonna be alright,” he mutters, clearing his throat. “I know it looks bad right now but we can clean you up some, okay? Just gotta find one of those 24-hour places you were talking about and get some Neosporin and shit, I dunno.”

_We_. Connor hiccups into the back of his hand and presses the dry napkins against his eyes despite how much it hurts. “You don’t even know me,” he says around a sob. “There’s no reason for you to help me like this.” _There’s no reason for me to trust you_ , he doesn’t say.

Hank waves him off and stands up to reach into one of the small drawers built into the side of his sleeper cab. He pulls a pair of socks out and sits back down to unfold them, then leans over to get a pair of well-worn work boots from behind the driver seat.

“Chalk it up to my karmic contribution of the week,” Hank says. “You’ve had a rough night and it’s not like I’ve got anything fucking better to do when I’m not on the road.”

Connor’s tears are finally starting to dry even though he can feel the salty tracks gone tacky on his cheeks. “You should be sleeping,” he tries to reason, and knows full well that he’s fighting a losing battle.

“I can sleep more when I’m dead,” Hank grumbles, doing up the laces on his boots. “Now—do you need help getting up? Because it’d be a whole lot safer if you sat up front instead of on the floor.”

And that’s how, five cumbersome but well-intentioned minutes later, Connor finds himself buckled into the passenger seat of Hank’s truck with the heater warming him up and Sumo sitting in the aisle at his right, tongue lolling and ready for the next adventure.

Hank had briefly disappeared outside to check a few gauges on the oil tanker with a flashlight, but when he comes back he’s wearing a pair of jeans Connor hadn’t seen him bring along. He must’ve been too bashful to get dressed in the back, but it’s a small courtesy Connor notices all the same.

“Think we’re ready to roll outta this shithole,” Hank says, hauling himself back up into the driver’s seat. His keys are already cranked in the ignition with a single white rabbit foot hanging from the ring on a short chain. “If anybody back at base wants to swing dick about my logs being a little off I’ll just tell them I had to work around some unexpected fuckaround shit, which isn’t exactly a lie.”

It’s only then that Hank seems to remember his gun still sitting on the dashboard. He reaches up and takes it, carefully slipping it into a holster hidden under the hem of his shirt that Connor hadn’t noticed before. “Oops,” he says. “Can’t leave that out and flashing around.”

They roll past the quiet service station and remaining two sleepers in the overnight lot. It’s only a quarter past four in the morning but Connor swears the past hour lasted a century at least. He doesn’t know how he sucked a dick, got the shit beat out of him, and then unceremoniously dragged into the lives of an innocent man and his dog all within the span of sixty minutes, but time always flies when you’re having fun.

Plump and bright, the full moon shines like a lit globe now that the rain clouds have passed. Hank punches a button on his cell phone screen and then passes it over to Connor without a second thought. “Navigation says there’s a fuckin’ Walgreens or something up the road a couple miles. Should be kitty-corner from a Burger King at the next big intersection.”

Connor glances at the screen, watching the little traveler icon move along the highway as the big rig gradually picks up speed. Hank’s got about fifteen app icons open along the top of his display and Connor’s immediately tempted to clear them all out on itching impulse alone.

“Don’t you ever read your emails?” he asks, squinting at the tiny number next to the icon. 327 unread messages. The voicemail icon next to it is nearly just as bad.

“Nope,” Hank says, cheerfully enough. “Not usually.”

After that there’s a string of quiet, only the truck engine and a low radio tune filling the cab. Sumo has already grown bored with the prospect of a new journey and gone to lie down in his bed in the back, sighing away. Connor almost wishes he could curl up on the floor again and join him.

“I’m sorry about back there,” he says abruptly, breaking into the easy silence. The energy around them shifts some but doesn’t stiffen. “I didn’t mean to…y’know. Lose it like that.”

“It’s no big thing,” Hank says gruffly, keeping his eyes on the dark road. They pass a streetlamp every few dozen meters and the gold light ripples over his forearms and up his shoulders before disappearing again. “Sometimes shit sneaks up on you and you just gotta ride it out.”  

He clears his throat and lets his hands slide around the steering wheel. “If you’re dead set on not going to the hospital, it’s probably best you stay in the rig while I go inside.”

The implication that he looks like death warmed over remains unspoken, but Connor is smart enough to read between the lines. He’s also fucking _exhausted_ and would rather play in traffic than walk around a fluorescent-lit pharmacy with the dull pounding in his head, so the fact that Hank’s offering is a relief in itself.

“I’d appreciate that,” he says, then moves around in the seat to feel along the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I’ll give you some cash so you don’t have to—”

Connor stops short when his hand passes over the spot where his money is usually concealed and finds it empty. His brain doesn’t quite register this new conflicting information and he rends at the fabric again, managing to tear the hole already there even wider as it reveals his damp t-shirt underneath and nothing else. In the same breadth of a moment he realizes his backpack isn’t between his feet anymore, either. He’d left it in the floor of the other truck when he ran.

“Oh fuck,” Connor hisses, dropping Hank’s phone between his knees as he bends at the waist to look at the floor, under the seat, hands scraping anywhere he can reach. “Oh no, oh fuck, oh _shit—_ “

“What’s wrong?” Hank says, glancing away from the road with his brows drawn together.

Connor all but rips his seatbelt off and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, shaking it out in front of him while his fingers run all along the lining and pockets. “My fucking money,” he says, frantic, and then can’t do anything but repeat it again but louder. “All my fucking money’s gone!”

Hank keeps looking between Connor and the highway like he’s unsure which is more important right now. “Did you drop it back there at the lot?” he asks.

“You gotta turn around,” Connor says, getting up to kneel down on the sticky floor mat to peer under the bunk and even Sumo’s bed. Nothing, not a single fucking dollar. “We have to go back and look—right now, Hank. _Please._ ”

“This thing doesn’t turn on a fucking dime, kid,” Hank says, but starts to slow the truck down anyway. “Just hold on a second and let me find somewhere to pull off and get her going in the opposite direction.”

Connor sits back down, head dropping into his hands. He doesn’t trust himself to speak through the panic bubbling up in his chest. A thousand different scenarios run through his mind while Hank does an about-face and drives them back to the service station, each one worse than the last. He’s broke. He’s homeless. He’ll never see anybody he knows ever again. All of this had been for nothing and it turns out he’d have been better off if he’d just let that john keep crushing his windpipe until it all went black and—

“Alright, here we are,” Hank says, cutting into his train of thought and bringing the rig to a gradual stop. “Think this is where I’d been set up before.”

Connor swings down out of the tanker before Hank’s even got it in park. The other two sleeper cabs are still there and silent, casting long shadows under the nearest light. The pavement is wet when Connor kneels down and looks under both trailers before getting up and tracing around the perimeter of the asphalt lot. He looks crazed and feels it now, too, picking up a cellophane burger wrapper and empty cigarette carton but nothing resembling his cash or backpack.

Hank is standing by the front of his truck, hands stuffed in his pockets, somewhere at the crossroads between pity and lost himself. He watches Connor without saying a word until the kid starts digging in the overflowing trash can in the middle of the lot, and then he breaks his silence.

“Connor,” Hank calls out, the name sharp on his tongue. “ _Connor._ ”

He waits until Connor looks up, dropping a soggy paper cup with what looks like a used condom stuck on it to the ground.

“I don’t think it’s here,” Hank says. “We would’ve seen it by now, and you’re not going to find it in that mess.”

Connor’s arms fall slack at his sides. His sweatshirt is still somewhere in the cab of Hank’s truck and he’s starting to shake again in the chill now that all his adrenaline stores have been burned up and his blood sugar’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. “That was everything,” he rasps, not caring if Hank can hear him or not. “Every dollar to my name. It’s all gone.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Hank says in earnest. “You’ll have to—”

“Do what?” Connor shouts, kicking at the garbage littered around him. “Suck and fuck my way up to another pathetic $300? Whore myself out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry running freight on this side of the Mississippi until I can scrape enough together to buy a gun and blow my fucking brains out? Because I can’t think of a better fucking alternative right now!”

Hank bristles, glancing uneasily around the lot. “Stop that,” he growls. “Man to fucking man, you need to calm the fuck down. The cops you didn’t want me to call are going to show up if you don’t be quiet and keep your shit together.”

Connor goes mute but practically sways on his feet, suddenly woozy in light of his outburst. Everything left in his stomach churns and he gags when he thinks of his livelihood lost somewhere in the cab of that red rig, body doubling over without his control. He drops down to his knees, the rough asphalt digging into his palms while he heaves and brings up a burning surge of stomach bile. Then another, and another, until he’s choking and his gut wrings itself empty.

He’s still spitting on the concrete and wiping tears away when he sees Hank’s boots come into view. A hand reaches down to touch his shoulder but Connor hasn’t gathered enough strength to stand just yet, still kneeling there next to his puddle of vomit.

“Have you ever lost everything?” he asks, wiping the back of one hand across his mouth as he pants. His head falls and hangs between his shoulders, defeated. “Everything.”

“Yes,” Hank says simply. “Now give me your hand.”

Connor looks up at him but doesn’t say another word. A few moments later he holds up a filthy hand and Hank takes it in his own without pause, pulling him up off the ground in one fell swoop. They walk back to the truck together in silence, and Connor lets Hank open the door for him before he weakly pulls himself back up into the passenger seat.

This time, he can’t even bring himself to apologize. It probably wouldn’t make much of a difference either way.

“And now, to the goddamn pharmacy,” Hank says before shoving the door shut.

Connor watches the top of his head move around the front of the rig on his way back to the driver’s side. “To the pharmacy,” he echoes, resting his temple against the cool window glass. In less than two minutes he’s fast asleep.    


* * *  


When Hank finally pulls into the Walgreens parking lot it’s empty save for two other cars, probably the lone night clerk and overnight manager. He parks around back by the dumpsters and looks over at Connor, long since dead to the world and currently drooling a small stream against the window. For once Hank’s almost glad Sumo had already slobbered all over it.

“Keep an eye on things, bud,” Hank murmurs to the dog, grabbing his flannel shirt and wallet from behind the seat. He pats his holster to make sure everything’s accounted for and locks the truck up before heading inside, breath fogging some in the pre-dawn chill.

He walks through the automatic doors and returns the clerk’s tired greeting before grabbing a basket, then immediately makes way for the back of the store where the pharmacy is. The prescription counter is barred up for the night but there are aisles and aisles of over-the-counter shit and every other medicinal thing imaginable, from arch support insoles to enema kits.

Hank winces when he sees the enema stuff and keeps on walking, trying to strong-arm that notion out of his mind. He hadn’t thought to ask if—well. There would’ve been no easy way to broach the subject and Connor was already in a fragile enough state. He knows the poor kid was beaten, anybody with fucking eyes could see that, but the lengths to which he was assaulted still wasn’t too clear.

It’s all a lot to think about, and Hank can’t quite believe he’s standing in a drugstore before five in the morning with a battered rent boy snoring in his truck, but he supposes weirder things have happened. That thought carries him over to the first aid section and from there he tries to gather most of everything Connor may need to start putting his face back together. Antiseptic soap, a bottle of peroxide, cotton gauze, some butterfly bandages. A few aisles up he grabs a cheap toothbrush along with a jug of distilled water and some wet wipes.

Wandering further, Hank ponders the modest grocery and snack selection before adding a box of protein bars and a couple bottles of ginger ale into his basket. Throws in some bananas, a bag of Cheetos and some gummy worms for good fucking measure and then makes his way to the front, hoping to God he’s got enough to help clear some of the blood away and get some food back in Connor’s stomach.

Closer to checkout Hank remembers Connor’s ripped sweatshirt and stops in an aisle full of women’s hats and beachwear. He sees plenty of muumuus and bikini cover-ups on final summer clearance but there’s isn’t much by way of cold weather clothing with the exception of three zippered sweatshirts stocked at the end of the display. One is hot pink, one is an extra small, and the third one is exactly what Hank was looking for. He grabs it and throws it over one shoulder before toting his haul up to the front.

The graveyard clerk decides to strike up some small talk when Hank throws a bottle of pain reliever tablets on the counter with the rest of his shit. “You opening up a hospital?” he asks.

“Something like that,” Hank says, and then forks over a stack of bills to cover the charge.

Back outside, he taps on the window and waits until Connor sees him and fumbles open the door, peering down at the trucker where he’s standing in the lot with a handful of bags in one fist and a new sweatshirt in the other.

“I come bearing gifts,” Hank announces, and then tosses the jacket up for Connor to catch. “Hope that fits.”

Connor looks at the sweatshirt and the price tag still on it, then immediately opens his mouth to argue.

“I’m not entertaining anymore self-deprecating bullshit tonight, slick,” Hank says. “Everybody here has hit their quota, so please put that goddamn thing on so you stop shivering.”  

Connor pops the tag off and undoes the zipper. The jacket is simple enough, dark grey with some trendy blue triangle embellished on the front. It kind of looks like something a stoner kid would wear, but it’s soft and warm and Connor pulls it on without a fuss.

“Thanks,” he says, eyes strayed down to the other bags in Hank’s possession. “What’s in there?”

“A traveling clinic, so I’ve been informed,” Hank tells him before setting his heavier parcels down. “Do you wanna come down here so you can clean some shit off?”

Standing on the curb, Connor holds out his hands and lets Hank pour some soap into them before he cracks open the jug of water to rinse. The liquid runs rust-colored as it trickles onto the pavement, and from there Connor dampens some baby wipes and starts cleaning up his face and hairline despite the sting of fresh cuts. He goes through five or six of the things before they aren’t stained red anymore.

Hank eyeballs Connor’s face when he’s mostly done, mouth twisted up in thought. “Some of that isn’t washing off anytime soon,” he says, and then tears open the box of butterfly bandages. “You look in a mirror yet?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Connor tells him, blowing out a haggard sigh. “Does it look like I need stitches?”

“I don’t think anything’s deep enough, but that’s why I got these things,” Hank says, shaking the bandage strips. “You got a cut above your eye and one on the bridge of your nose. Think the one on your lip should be alright for now if you don’t mess with it.”

Connor feels like he’s bordering on a trance state while he watches Hank slowly peel plastic off the bandage adhesive one side at a time before smearing some antiseptic on the gauze pad. “You’re pretty thorough with this stuff for a truck driver,” he says.

“Had an ex-wife who was a nurse,” Hank mumbles, voice gone gruff again. “She managed to teach me a thing or two before she started fucking her therapist on the side.”

Connor immediately swallows against a hint of old guilt crawling up his neck. He watches Hank’s hands and tries to imagine what his wife might’ve looked like, why they separated or why the therapist was a better catch in the end. “Generous of her,” he says dryly.

Hank’s mouth presses into a thin smile. “You have no idea.”

He looks down at the butterfly bandage in his fingers and then up at Connor’s face, suddenly gone a bit meek. Connor can tell by the slight flush at the base of his throat even though it’s below 60 outside. “Listen—uh. You wanna put these on, or…? I mean, I can do it, it ain’t no big thing.”

Connor takes the first bandage and manages to peer at his reflection long enough in the side view mirror to cover the gash on the bridge of his nose. He hardly recognizes himself; he’d been beaten up a few times before, a couple times in high school and then some rough johns to boot, but never this bad. Everything is slowly turning a sickening shade of brassy purple. The white of his left eye is scarlet, blood having pooled in around the iris from burst vessels. His split lip is swollen twice its normal size, but by sheer dumb luck all his teeth are still in his head. He has a sinking suspicion his nose might be broken after all.

“Jesus,” Connor says. He turns away from the mirror and thuds back against the side of the rig. “Fuck.”

“Still gotta tape that eyebrow back together,” Hank offers, taking a shuffled step forward. “Just—turn your face this way for second so I can see. Forgot my damn glasses.”

Connor does, closing his eyes. He feels Hank’s calloused fingertips brush his skin, there one second and gone the next, only lingering long enough to gently press the bandage into place. It’s perhaps the kindest touch without an ulterior motive he’s felt in—weeks, if not months. Maybe even longer than that.

“You look like you need to sleep for a week,” Hank says, digging around in another one of the pharmacy bags. He comes back up with ginger ale and a power bar, cracks the lid off the bottle and holds it out.

Connor’s grateful for the drink and takes a few sips, slipping the protein bar into his jacket pocket for later. He’s still got his wallet and his dying phone in his jeans but they won’t do him much good now that his backpack and cash are long gone.

“Do you know if there’s a shelter around here?” he asks Hank, lowering himself onto the rig’s running board. He hates how small and young his voice sounds in this empty parking lot, as if he’s closer to 13 than 30. “Just somewhere I could stay for a couple days while I figure out…whatever comes next, I guess.”

“Not off the top of my head, no,” Hank says, jamming his hands back in his jean pockets. He gestures at the first aid supplies and bag of snacks at their feet. “You should take most of this for the road, get you started off on the right foot.”

Connor looks into the bags for a few beats, halfway hoping they may give him an answer of some kind. Maybe if he tears open another bandage his fortune will fall out on a little slip of paper, lucky lotto numbers printed on the back and all. He imagines clicking the worn-down heels of his waterlogged sneakers together and chanting _there’s no place like home._ Hank would probably shit on the spot.

Besides that, Connor’s long since come to grips with the fact that life is nothing like a fairytale.

For his part, Hank—whoever Hank _is_ , sinner or saint, good guy or bad, Connor won’t ever know for sure—looks like he’s thinking pretty hard. The crease between his brows has drawn into a deep furrow and he’s made no move to pull out his phone to look up any halfway houses or shelters nearby.

Connor doesn’t give him time to come to any conclusions.

“I should get going before the sun is up,” he says, leaning over to pick up two of the plastic bags at random. They hang from his fingers like dead weight. “I wish I could pay you back for all—”

“Nah, no need for that,” Hank says. His expression is still clouded over with some vague consternation he’s making no effort to hide. “I’m just glad I was there when I was, y’know.”

Connor nods. He was glad, too, but only looks up at the glowing Walgreens sign and the other businesses lit up along the boulevard, an array of yellow and blue and pink neon. Across the street the orange Home Depot sign has partially burnt out and now reads _Ho Depot_. Some cosmic irony so fine it must’ve been aged in a barrel.

“Well, thanks again Hank,” Connor says, reaching out to shake the older man’s hand. Hank looks so grey and stricken Connor can hardly manage to look him in the eye. “Tell Sumo the pleasure was all mine.”

He gets to the front entrance with two grocery bags and is deciding which way to turn down the long boulevard when Hank swears and jogs halfway up the parking lot.

“Can I give you a ride into town, at least?” he calls out. “You’re sure you haven’t got folks anywhere around here—somebody who can look after you for a week or two?”

Connor laughs outright at that and figures he’s got nothing to lose in telling the truth. “Not unless you want to drive the 800 miles to Detroit.”

Hank’s mouth falls open as he bodily leans into the word. “ _Detroit?_ No shit.”

“What?” Connor blurts out, puzzling over the other man’s expression from a distance. “That’s where my family is—well, the closest thing I have left to family, anyway.”

Hank’s face only splits into a wide grin and he barks out a laugh, the first real one Connor’s heard all night. “You’re in luck, kid,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief as he looks off into the rising daybreak behind Connor. “Seems like we’re both headed in the same direction.”

Connor almost drops his plastic bags but manages to hold on for dear life. “You—you live in Michigan?”

“Detroit proper, baby,” Hank says, rocking back on his heels. “Born and raised.”

They seemed locked in a standoff for a few moments, watching each other. Breathing. Saying nothing while the native songbirds slowly begin to rouse and greet dawn. Connor’s face holds smooth but his heart feels like a caged hummingbird bouncing off his ribs.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, quiet. Testing. Prodding. And so deeply, terribly hopeful in this singular moment that it feels like a self-betrayal.

Hank only laughs and goes to reach for his wallet. “You wanna see my driver’s license and my permits? Even Sumo’s dog tags have the 313 area code.”

Connor doesn’t ask to see the papers and didn’t give a shit about them to start with. All the moisture has been wicked out of his mouth again and he takes a breath to try and steady the tremor in his voice. “Why should I trust you?”

Hank ponders that for a beat. “I don’t know,” he says, a whisper of breath fogging from between parted lips. “Guess you’ve got no real reason to.”

In a world of men who have only ever tried to seduce him at best and forcibly manipulate or break him at worst, Connor doesn’t know how to respond to that. He’s used to resisting as a formality or bending under applied pressure to keep from splintering in two—never anything in-between. But here and now, unlike so many of those other man, Hank is merely offering a choice.

“It’s up to you, kid,” Hank says, taking a single backward step toward his rig. “I’ve got to get back on schedule unless I wanna give Fowler a coronary, but the seat’s open if you want it.”

Connor still doesn’t know what to say, but in the end what he hears himself tell Hank is, “All right.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The warm reception the first chapter of this received blew me slam out of the water, so I want to thank you guys for being so generous and encouraging ❤! I'm not really sure if I'll be able to adhere to any regular update schedule (probably not, knowing me) but I want to extend my gratitude in advance for your patience as we keep trucking ahead, lol. I'm juggling two weird part-time jobs and some mysterious health issues as of late and sometimes writing can be hard, but I'll save that sermon for later.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! As always, if you ever want to chat or hit up the DMs, I'm @honkforhankcon on tumblr :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I had to go back and do some minor tweaking in the first two chapters to clarify Hank’s truck is hauling an oil tank. They talk about it briefly in this chapter, but it’ll come into play a little more later :)

  
  
Hank’s unmade bunk remains empty but Connor stuffs his new sweatshirt between his neck and the window and sleeps well into late morning. He briefly wakes every half-hour or so just long enough to be aware of the sun filtering in through the windshield at a new angle or Hank shifting the truck’s gears as they chug up a steep hill on the highway. South Carolina slowly fades into the bluish mountains of North Carolina just after noontime, Hank’s navigation steering them along a route that’ll lead right up into the heart of Asheville.

They stop for gas and a piss break in a little town based out a place honest-to-Christ called Transylvania County. Connor gets out and stretches while Hank stands at the fuel pump with Sumo diligently keeping guard at his side. The air is clean here and the golden sunshine feels good on Connor’s skin, body warmer now but still clammy after sleeping in his rain-soaked clothes from the night before. His feet feel slightly soggy in his shoes and the last damn thing he needs right now is a fresh case of trench foot.

Remembering Hank’s modest offering for some dry socks, he shuffles around the front of the truck just in time to catch the man in question taking a long swig from the open end of a stainless steel flask. Hank coughs a little around the burn of whatever he’d swallowed in surprise but then tucks the flask away again, acting like it’d never made an appearance at all.

“Mornin’,” he says even though it’s lunchtime.

Connor tries to look casual while he watches the numbers on the gas pump roll over and keep ticking. Sumo’s tail sweeps the ground when he sees his new human traveling companion and Connor reaches out to rub the velvet-soft fur on the dog’s ears to keep from having to look Hank too closely in the eye. Asking for things outright had never come easily.

“So…about those spare clothes you had,” he says, feeling Hank squinting at him through the sun. “Do you mind if borrow a few things? Just long enough for my clothes to dry out all the way, y’know.”

“Oh shit, yeah, go ahead and help yourself,” Hank says straightaway, pointing up at the sleeper. He looks relieved that’s all Connor has on his mind. “Jesus, why didn’t you say something sooner? Cabinet behind the driver’s seat, second and third drawers down. It’s nothing fancy but take whatever you need.”

Connor nods and mumbles his quiet thanks, looking up at last to give Hank some approximation of a smile that makes the split in his lip tug at the edge. He can’t believe asking for a pair of fucking socks was enough to make him break out into a sweat, but he takes Hank’s go-ahead in stride and tries not to break into a run on his way back around the rig.

“I’ll be out here for a few more minutes so Sumo can eat and stretch his legs,” Hank calls out. “You can change in the back if you want—just pull the shade down and hang your stuff up by the heater unit. Guess we’ll find a laundromat or something later.”

Back in the truck, Connor draws the curtain around the sleeper nook and clicks on the little overhead light so he can see. The floor is still tacky with cherry cola and he makes quick work with a handful of baby wipes to mop up some of the syrup dried down on the matting so the pads of his feet don’t stick with the dog hair already there. He feels another phantom pang of guilt about the mess and resolves to help Hank clean out the cabin the next chance he gets.

True to Hank’s word, the second and third drawers in the storage cabinet are stocked with socks, undershirts, and some balled up pairs of clean boxer shorts. Connor pulls his rumpled t-shirt over his head and replaces it with a plain cotton V-neck two sizes too big. It hangs loose around his shoulders and nearly shows off the top of his sternum, but it’s soft and clean and feels like a wet dream compared to what he’d slept in. He doesn’t quite remember the last time his own t-shirt was washed anywhere other than a public bathroom sink and painstakingly blown out under a hand dryer. Had to be a few weeks at least.

Connor looks down at his dirty jeans and then back at the underwear, momentarily stricken. Even if he wanted to take advantage of Hank’s hospitality and borrow a pair of boxers, he knows they’d be too big to stay up around his waist. Connor bites the inside of his cheek and closes the drawer before stepping out of his jeans and briefs. There’s a pair of grey sweats hanging in the narrow closet next to Hank’s shirts and he decides those will have to do in a pinch, quickly pulling them off the hanger and up over his hips before tightening and knotting the drawstring.

The fleece lining is soft on his bare skin and Connor shivers involuntarily, pressing the heel of his hand against his groin before drawing in a shaky breath. Everything he’s wearing smells like clean laundry soap and a hint of what must be aftershave. He hates how comfortable it feels despite being unfamiliar—how the goodness of something so simple could be enough to make his eyes burn.

God, he really needs a fucking cigarette.

Connor steels himself and stares hard at his reflection in the compact mirror bolted to the closet door. His face looks worse than it did eight hours ago, the bruising gone bluish-black and mottled under his skin. The blood pooled around his left iris makes him look like a low-budget Terminator and he can barely touch the bridge of his nose without painful tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. It’s bad. It’s more than bad, and Connor can’t help but wonder what Hank thinks every time he has to look at his face. He roughly pushes the closet door shut before his mind carries him back into the gutter of self-pity.

There’s a knock on the outside glass and Connor yanks the curtain back to lean over and open the door. Hank looks up at him with one eye squinted shut and a hand shielding his face from the sun, the little gap between his teeth shining again. “Guess you’re decent,” he says, looking Connor up and down with a cursory look. “Some of that fit okay?”

“Yeah, not too shabby,” Connor says, trying to play it cooler than before. He steps back to plop down in the passenger seat and pulls his new jacket on before rummaging around in the pharmacy bags in the floorboard. Bananas, a protein bar, gummy worms, and cheese puffs. Hank sure wasn’t lying about being a bachelor, but the Cheetos still tempt Connor into popping open the bag anyway. That first burst of powdered cheese dust on his tongue is so good his eyes nearly roll back from sheer ecstasy.

Sumo lumbers up into the truck, panting and elated from his brisk jaunt outside, and goes straight for the cheese puffs before Hank grabs him by the collar at the last second and hauls him back.

“Jesus Christ, dog,” he grouses, laughing as he shoos Sumo to the back. “You’d think I was starving him to death when he already eats as much as a goddamn pony.”

Connor stuffs another handful of Cheetos in his mouth as he watches Hank climb back up into his seat. He’d left his rabbit foot and keys in the ignition and merely cranks the engine over, watching the gas gauge on the dash roll back over to F for _full_. Connor marvels some at the fuel it takes to haul fuel in and of itself; he hadn’t really thought about the tankard hitched to the back of Hank’s truck until now. 800 miles was a long way to haul a single load of oil.

“I see your appetite’s back,” Hank says, shaking his head when Connor offers the open bag of cheese puffs. “Hand me one of those bananas, would you? Wouldn’t kill me to eat a piece of fruit.”

Hank peels the whole thing and eats it in three impressive bites before tossing the skin in the trash. He fusses with the navigation for a minute and then turns the AC down a notch so the cooler air blows his hair away from his face. Connor watches him roll up the sleeves on his flannel from the corner of one eye and tries not to stare. There’s a thick scar cut into Hank’s right forearm shaped something like a crescent moon, pale pink and puckered some with age. It’s deep enough that hair doesn’t seem to grow there anymore.

“Bar fight,” Hank says, flexing his hand as he peers at the scar himself. He doesn’t seem to notice that Connor flinched hard enough to drop a cheese puff for being caught gawking or that Sumo’s scooted across the floor to hoover it up in one bite. “Some asswipe broke a bottleneck, stuck me in a few other places too. Real dirty stuff—people don’t fight like they used to.”

“How did people used to fight?” Connor asks. He briefly thinks of the black and white westerns his half-deaf grandfather used to watch at full volume on weeknights, where the hero cowboy would lay out bandit with a John Wayne punch that never even grazed his face. No blood spatter, no bruises, no broken teeth—it was consumable violence without any of the consequences. “Maybe I missed the golden age of having good sportsmanship about getting the shit stomped out of you.”

Hank clears his throat and sniffs at that, suddenly gone a tinge uneasy. “I guess you’d know dirty fighting better than most,” he mumbles. “Listen, if I ever say something stupid or totally off-base, just tell me to shut the fuck up, alright? I’m just running my mouth over here like an old man.”

The truck lurches back to life and they silently let a few cars pass before pulling back onto the highway. Connor’s far from offended, but he has to make himself put the Cheetos away and fish out one of the power bars instead, idly munching around the chalky protein taste mixed in with chocolate and peanut butter while he ponders Hank’s words.

“You can’t be that old,” he says, reaching up to thumb some chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “Definitely not a quote-unquote _old man_.”

Hank snorts while he drives. “You an expert on sight-reading people’s ages? Take a wild guess.”

Connor peers at Hank again, briefly sizing him up. The silvered hair and crow’s feet are there, a little bit of a softened beer gut, but Hank’s face isn’t as weathered as some of the men Connor’s seen. Past a certain age most long-haul truckers began taking on the appearance of tanned leather.

“47,” he says, mostly just to see what kind of rise he can get out of Hank. “But you had a mid-life crisis at 30.”

“Wrong and absolutely fucking not,” Hank says, still vaguely amused. “I’m turning 53 this year, but thanks for flattering me.”

“What about you?” he asks a beat later, eyes briefly skirting over Connor’s face before looking back to the road.

“What about what?” Connor asks. “If you’re asking about my mid-life crisis, I’ve been in one since I was about 22. Actually, my whole existence is probably one big mid-life crisis.”

Hank’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. “Hold on—you mean you’re not 22 right now?”

Connor lets out an ugly sort of laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. I mean, I look like a Picasso somebody left out in the fucking rain and ran over with their car. Not exactly in the prime picture of my youth.”

“There’s no way you’re a day over 25,” Hank says. The look on his face suggests he may suspect some kind of witchcraft above any other answer. “I refuse to believe it.”

“Brace yourself,” Connor says glumly. “I turned 31 in August.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Hank says. He looks like he’s chewing on a thought and has the decency to look apologetic, at least, before he says it out loud. “Aren’t you—a little old? To, y’know. Uhm.”

“Be fucking my way up and down the eastern seaboard for chump change?” Connor offers. “Probably. Unless you thought I was doing something cute like running away from home to be with my star-crossed lover, which would definitely look better for future autobiographical purposes.”

Hank makes some kind of choked sound in the back of his throat between a laugh and genuine surprise. Sumo’s ears perk up and he whines from his bed in the back, head cocked to the side while he listens.

“You’re a riot, kid,” Hank says. “Or, _not_ kid, come to think of it.” He looks more flustered than apologetic. “Sorry about that.”

Connor doesn’t mind and says as much, only hunkering down further into his new sweatshirt. He’s feeling comfortable now with some food in his belly and the heater making him sleepy and warm. The Blue Ridge Mountains look like an oil landscape blurred together outside his window, almost surreal in their sprawl and colorful dusting of autumn foliage.

“You have any more burning questions?” he asks, not quite looking at Hank from under heavy lids. It feels like both a bold and foolish proposition at the same time, but he can’t stop himself. Connor mostly hopes Hank will feed him some information back in exchange for a few half-truths or embellishments if he’s lucky.

“Like what, some kinda fucked-up game of truth or dare?” Hank asks.

“More or less.”

“I think we’re pretty limited to the amount of dares we can safely pull off in an oil tanker going 75 down the interstate, but knock yourself out with some truths,” Hank says with a roll of one shoulder. “I don’t have too much worth hiding.”

Connor feels a strange little thrill race through him. “Alright then, truth or truth,” he says. “One free pass for each of us. We’ll keep going until we’ve both used up our pass.”

“Fair enough,” Hank says. He checks his side mirror and slowly merges the truck into the slow lane to let another rig rumble by. “Go ahead and start us out.”

Connor has to pretend he needs a moment or two to gather his thoughts even though he knows exactly what he wants to ask. “What kind of sauce are you keeping in that hip flask?”

Hank’s eyes cut over sharp and fast, a flash of blue steel. “I don’t drink when I’m on the road.”

“I never said you did,” Connor says lightly. “But you clearly do when the truck’s in park and you can sneak a sip or two.”

“I already hate this fuckin’ game,” Hank says with a grunt, but reaches into the inner pocket of his flannel and pulls the flask out, tossing it sideways to Connor who almost fumbles and drops the damn thing. “Take a swig for yourself.”

When the cap is unscrewed Connor brings the container up to his nose and sniffs. Whiskey, probably Jim Beam or Jack. He should’ve been able to guess that one.

“Shame,” he says, necking off a burning mouthful of the stuff before replacing the cap with a hiss. “I was hoping it was pinot grigio.”

Hank narrows his eyes but chuckles under his breath and snatches the flask back before tucking it away again. “Alright, let’s keep pushing the envelope,” he says. “Do you ever screw women for money or only men?”

Connor senses there’s an unspoken question veiled there but lets it slide. “I can count the number of women who have utilized my services on one hand,” he says, then cuts down to the chase. “I prefer dick but I can get it up for whoever’s paying.”

“Hm,” is all Hank says, making a newly-informed sort of sound low in his chest. His lack of any further response almost makes Connor squirm. “Your turn again.”

“Do _you_ fuck both ways or keep it strictly straight-cut and red-blooded?” Connor asks, far too quick on the uptake.

Hank only glances at him and says one word before looking back at the road ahead. “Pass.”

A rush of ruddy heat floods into Connor’s bruised cheeks but he bites his tongue. Hank lets the electrified silence bloom between them for a few seconds and then nonchalantly pitches his next query.

“What happened that made you get into this life?”

“A lot of things,” Connor says as he reaches for his bottle of ginger ale, gone mostly flat and lukewarm now. “Most of it’s genuinely not that interesting so I’ll spare you the finer details.”

Hank nudges a little further. “Maybe I’m interested.”

Connor holds up his soda bottle like a spyglass, squinting one eye shut to peer through the green plastic at the hills unfurling in front of them. “Maybe I’ll pass.”

Johnny Cash is on the radio singing about having been everywhere, and that’s the end of truth or truth.  
  


* * *  
  


The afternoon passes in strange jaunts and furlongs of time, Connor dozing in and out of consciousness as North Carolina passes them by. Hank drives, and drives, stops to fill up the gas tank and walk Sumo, and then drives some more. They’re scheduled to be in Tennessee before dark, but Hank grumbles something about needing _some real food and fuckin’ sleep_ just when the sun is beginning to touch down on the edge of the western horizon. He steers the truck off one of the last exits before the state line and parks at a service station junction lit up with a Cracker Barrel and Motel 6.

Connor doesn’t know if Cracker Barrel qualifies as real food, exactly, but can’t find it in his heart or gut to complain. He’d polished off the bag of Cheetos around 4:00 that afternoon and begrudgingly eaten one of the browning bananas, breaking it off into little pieces and mashing the sweet fruit against the roof of his mouth. Now he’s so hungry he swears his stomach is wrapped around his backbone, but Hank bypasses the restaurant’s parking lot and pulls the tankard up behind the motel before he cuts the engine.

“I’m not sure if you’re feeling up to making a public appearance tonight, but a shower wouldn’t hurt either way,” he says. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Connor and Sumo watch him swing down out of the cab and start cutting up toward the office, winding between parked cars glowing in the wake of auburn dusk.

Connor sits there and watches Hank’s silhouette disappear around the side of the stucco-face building. Part of him thinks about getting out of the truck, walking off into the falling darkness and not turning back. The other part is indulgently selfish, tired and starving and in desperate need of a bath and a good night’s sleep. All of it is being squeezed out of Hank’s dime, though, and the part of Connor that wants to cut and run tells him he’ll never be able to pay his traveling companion back unless he gets down on his knees and passes the offering plate the only real way he knows how.

Maybe that was Hank’s plan all along. Maybe Connor’s being used and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Or maybe he’s just jaded.

“This place is nearly packed out of the house,” Hank says when he comes back bearing a plastic key card and a handful of prepackaged butter mints he must’ve lifted from the reception desk like a bear pawing for honey. “Last double they had was a smoking room, so I hope you enjoy onset emphysema as one of your free amenities.”

Connor snorts. “What makes you think I don’t smoke?” This is just reminding him how far he’d chew through his own seatbelt for a pack of cigs right now.

“Well, _I_ don’t,” Hank says matter-of-factly. “Shit put my dad in an early grave. Plus it’s not that great for the dog, but I guess we’ll just have to grin and bear it for one night.”

There’s that _We_ again. Connor tries not to raise any questions about the fact they’ll be sharing sleeping quarters all night. Especially when he’s at larger disadvantage with a dead cell phone, no gun, and no St. Bernard to smother anybody on command.

“Thanks,” he says instead, word sounding far too small in his mouth again. “For putting me up like this.”

Hank waves him off and furtively pats around his ass to make sure his wallet’s still in place. “I was gonna rent a room anyway to give my back a rest,” he says, ruffling Sumo’s ears when the dog jumps up into the driver’s seat to greet him. “Better to let this old beast stretch out some, too.”

Connor takes a swift but heavenly shower while Hank gets Sumo settled in the room with a bowl of kibble and his water dish. The dog had been overjoyed at the sight of a real bed and bounded across the motel room in two giant leaps, jumping up and landing squarely on the mattress closest to the bathroom to start rolling around. Connor had felt one in the same about the prospect of standing under some hot water that wasn’t in a dirty truck stop stall covered in graffiti and questionable body fluids.

“Guess that one’s mine,” Hank had said with a sigh before sinking down next to his dog and clicking on the old TV. “Go ahead and get cleaned up.”

After locking the door, Connor makes quick work of lathering up his hair and body with cheap motel soap, then stands there and lets the residual dried blood and grime swirl down the drain while the spray beats against his neck and shoulders. Despite the stinging on his face it feels so good he thinks he could cry. And maybe he does for a minute, but there’d be no way of knowing with the water steaming around him.

Connor changes back into his borrowed sweats and new jacket in the fogged-up bathroom and tries not to think about being naked under the fleecy pants. His only saving grace is that Hank’s undershirt is long enough to cover his crotch, so if a gentle breeze happened to pass by at least he’d have that for some small modesty. Back out in the bedroom proper he tries to comb his damp hair into place and gives up on the little cowlick that curls over his forehead. Hank watches from the corner of his eye as Connor stands in front of the mirror and replaces the bandages on his split nose and eyebrow.

“How do I look?” Connor asks when he’s done, mostly joking.

“Like hell, but clean at least,” Hank tells him, getting up from the bed Sumo is sprawled across. He saunters back outside and locks the door behind him and Connor, jimmying the handle to make sure it’s latched. “Let’s get some grub.”

The inside of Cracker Barrel is loud and brightly lit, full of country-style trinkets and kitschy bullshit produced en masse for middle-aged women who say things like _farmhouse chic_. In the anticipation of Halloween and Thanksgiving everything is garlanded in orange and black and festive decor, but the air inside smells like cinnamon apples and hot buttery food and Connor’s stomach grumbles so ferociously he’s afraid Hank can hear it. The teenage hostess waiting to seat them stares wide-eyed at Connor’s face until Hank bends down into her line of sight to return a thin-lipped smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“A table for two, please,” he repeats, eyebrows high on his forehead. Connor recognizes the challenge in his expression and almost feels bad for the girl, but that thought drifts away as they walk through the restaurant and Hank seems to strategically shift his bulk around so he’s blocking most of the other patrons from gawking at Connor as they pass by.

It makes something in Connor’s stomach flutter, and then he promptly reminds himself that it’s nothing but hunger.

When they’re sitting across from each other and the waitress has brought two ice waters, Connor picks up his menu in both hands with the intent to order something hot and hearty but is having a hard time actually reading the words. He’s stuck in the breakfast section still, scanning over _Momma’s Pancake Breakfast_ on an unending loop.

He hasn’t sat across somebody like this for a meal in a long time. God, he’s pitiful—they’re in a fucking Cracker Barrel off an exit ramp in North Carolina, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t a candlelit steakhouse dinner and his sweating glass of lemon water isn’t finely aged wine. And no sooner does that last thought pass through Connor’s mind does he sit and watch Hank pull out his flask to draw off a long drink right there at the table.

“There are children in here,” Connor says, leveling Hank with a stern look over the top of his laminated menu.

“That’s alright,” Hank says, tucking his booze away again to produce a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. He perches them neatly on the bridge of his nose and goes about perusing the menu. “They’re all busy looking at you.”

“Fuck you,” Connor says under his breath. It sounds more conversational than curse-worthy, and he’s far too distracted with figuring out whether Hank’s silver frames suit his bone structure and complexion or not.

“There are children in here, Connor,” Hank chides back without looking up, only thumbing to the next page of his menu.

Connor stews on that so long he never does make it out of the breakfast section. When their waitress comes around Hank is locked and loaded with his dinner order for a chicken pot pie and a heap of mashed potatoes, but when he looks up expectantly from across the table there’s only one thing stamped in Connor’s mind.

“I’ll have Momma’s Pancake Breakfast and the blackest coffee you’ve got, please,” he says. The word _Momma_ sounds so peculiar on his tongue, not seamlessly southern enough to fit into the atmosphere here. Hank’s mouth twitches under his mustache when he hears it.

“You got it, shug,” the waitress says, scribbling that down on her notepad before heading for the kitchen. She won’t quite look Connor in the eye whenever she swings by their table but at least she’s not staring.

Connor’s temple-pounding headache is starting to creep back and his bottle of ibuprofen is still out in the truck or their motel room somewhere. There’s an older woman at the table behind Hank who’s been hiding her mouth behind her hand and whispering every time she looks in Connor’s direction. “I want to die,” he says, loud enough that she can hear him. And then, “Did you catch that, Janet?”

“No you don’t,” Hank says, finally pulling his glasses off and stowing them away in his shirt pocket again. He doesn’t even turn around to look at the Janet clutching her pearls behind him. “You’ve got pancakes coming.”

"My one reason to live," Connor says, slumping back in his chair. His coffee arrives a few moments later and he dumps two sugars in it before bringing it right to his mouth. Scalding and bitter as dirt, just how he likes it. Feels like it's scourging his insides clean the whole way down. As he stares down into the black liquid and taps the tip of his middle finger against the ceramic mug, a new question raises in the back of his mind.

Hank is somehow looking up in anticipation before Connor can even open his mouth. "Why are you hauling a single tank of oil all the way to Detroit?"

"Private buyer there wants it," Hank says with a little shrug. "Obviously has money to burn, some kind of researcher or scientist from what I can gather. They wanted a tank of the crude stuff sucked straight out of the Gulf, completely untouched by the big oil companies."

Connor tongues around the mending split in his lip while he tries to wrap his head around that. "What would they even use it for? It's just one tank."

"That wasn't written on my freight roster," Hank says. "The job came across Fowler's desk, he asked who wanted it. None of the younger guys with families or flames wanted to make the drive all the way down to Florida and back, so I said I'd take it."

"When were you in Florida?" Connor asks loudly enough that Janet cuts him another dirty look. He's half-tempted to flip her off but is more invested in Hank for the time being.

"I got in and out pretty fast," Hank says, eyes narrowing a fraction. "Picked up the load and left around two days ago, maybe. Who's asking?"

Connor's stake in Florida is a lot more bizarre and complicated than a truck hauling job, but he can't be spilling his guts in the middle of a crowded Cracker Barrel. "I was living down there for a while earlier this year," he says, which is true enough even though he sniffs and messes with his straw paper like it's no big thing. "Got caught up in some weird shit, y'know. Had to bail out a lot sooner than I'd anticipated."

Hank hums some, gone curious. He rubs the whiskers along his jaw and catches Connor's eye. "You were living with somebody else?"

Connor's stomach tightens reflexively at the suggestion and he hopes it didn't show on his face. "Something like that," he says, not offering anything more.

Their waitress comes back out balancing a tray full of hot food, then, and Connor's pleased as punch when he sees his pancakes arrive with a side of bacon and scrambled eggs. He smothers the latter in ketchup and pepper and digs right in, oblivious to the offended look on Hank's face.

“That’s more ketchup than eggs, but bon appétit I guess,” Hank says, reaching over to the condiments himself for the half-empty bottle of Tabasco. He shakes some hot sauce on his potatoes and takes a tentative bite of chicken pot pie, blowing on the steam to cool it down. Meanwhile Connor has already demolished half a pancake and every bit of egg on his plate, only a red smear of ketchup belying the fact they were ever there at all. He goes in on the bacon before Hank flags down the waitress again and orders a basket of steak fries.

"You may need something later," he says, watching Connor drench his next pancake in butter and syrup. "I haven't seen anybody eat like that since I was in high school."

Connor knows he's not a messy eater, per se, but he also knows he has the tendency to inhale in lieu of savoring most meals. It takes Hank's comment to make him remember where he's at and who he's with. Nobody is going to take his plate away or tell him he can't have it. They aren't on limited rations, and Hank just ordered him an extra basket of fries he didn't even need for fuck's sake.

"Sorry," he says, pausing to wipe around his mouth and take a carefully measured sip of water. The back of his neck tingles with heat like it'd been slapped. "Bad habit from being on the road."

"I feel that," Hank says with a groan, plonking his spoon down into the crust of his pot pie to get another mouthful of steaming carrots and chicken. "This is probably the first meal I've eaten that didn't come in a bag for at least two fucking weeks."

Janet is watching them again and Connor suddenly isn't embarrassed anymore as he picks up his coffee cup and tips it toward Hank. "Cheers to that shit," he says, smiling just a little when Hank clinks his water glass back in kind.

"Cheers to that, kid," Hank says, winking over the lip of his glass as he takes a drink.  
  


* * *  
  


Darkness has finally fallen as they make their way back to the motel, weaving across a browning strip of grass dividing the restaurant parking from an overnight lot. A few lonely crickets chirp along the roadside and in the scrubby hedge planted around the perimeter of the building. Nighttime traffic roars by on a nearby overpass but Connor's long since grown used to the sound as background noise in the landscape of his life.

Sumo greets them at the door with a happy _boof!_ and Hank sheds out of his flannel overshirt before heading straight to the bathroom. "I'm gonna hit the shower," he says as Connor's eyes stray to the gun visible at his hip now. "Don't let Sumo convince you he's a lap dog or you'll regret it forever."

Connor draws the smoke-stained curtains shut and sits on the edge of the second bed. This situation, this scene, isn't exactly foreign to him. Though his trysts in seedy motels had been scarcer than his time spent in sleeper rigs, there had still been a few. The john would always go to shower and then when he came back out, Connor would kneel on the bed and...

Sumo's giant head butts into Connor's stomach hard enough that he lets out a gasp of air in a startled _oof_. The dog buries his face in Connor's lap and leans all his weight in until Connor brings both hands up to scratch around his ears and neck, fingers combing through the shaggy fur. He grins despite himself, content with Sumo's soft hair and happy sighing.

It's a good distraction as he endeavors to push older thoughts from his mind, focusing on the television and the dog's steady, sleepy breathing instead while the shower runs behind a closed door. Something about the hypnotic way the water falls against the floor of the tub starts making Connor's eyes sink shut, too, and by the time Hank walks out of the bathroom in his shorts and a fresh t-shirt, Connor's sprawled backwards across the duvet with both feet hanging off the edge of the mattress, fully dressed and gently snoring.

Sumo looks up from the other bed long enough to eyeball his human before he does a full-body stretch and flops back over. _What?_ his expression says. _I didn't tell him to fall asleep with all his fuckin' clothes on._

"Christ," Hank hisses, running a hand back through his towel-dried hair. He stows his gun and wallet in the bedside table and stands there, fighting himself internally for far too long before he decides to walk across the room and around the side of Connor's bed.

"Hey kid," he whispers, shaking the dirty toe of Connor's sneaker. "You're gonna wake up with a broken back if you don't get in bed. Happens after you turn 30."

No response.

"Connor," he tries again, louder this time. That makes the younger man stir some but he's still dead to the world. Hank says a colorful array of choice words under his breath but then leans down to start pulling the laces on Connor's shoes, undoing the bows before he can pull the tongues up and slide them both off. They flop onto the carpeted floor and lay where they land.

The next order of business would be getting Connor’s legs in bed. But Hank's no fool, and when Connor's breathing changes he immediately takes a step back, feeling a jolt of something uneasy spike through his heart. "I was just taking your shoes off," he says quietly. "Nothing else."

Connor's eyes open and find Hank’s through the dimly flickering light of the television. They look too-glassy and wide, nigh on frightened. Nobody says anything for a long moment, nor do they move, and Hank feels a cold bead of sweat gather between his shoulder blades before Connor finally blinks and goes to pull his legs up onto the mattress.

Hank thinks he's finally fucking lost it and is hearing things when Connor's voice drifts back to him, gently muffled in the pillow his head's resting on. "You could, if you wanted to," he says, dangerously quiet. "I wouldn't stop you—I couldn't."

Acid rises in Hank's throat and he wants to yell but only digs his fingers into his own palms instead until he thinks he feels a vessel burst. He’s half-blind with anger but doesn’t even know who he’s mad at. "I would never," he says, voice full of broken gravel, and then flees to the other side of the room.

Connor faces the wall and waits out the frantic pounding of his heart, face gone numb in the wake of what he’d just said. In a moment of fear his voice had spoken for him, but it was fear based in the ugliness of reality. He wonders if he should apologize but only squeezes his eyes shut instead, listening to the telltale sound of Hank unscrewing the lid of his flask. He doesn’t have to watch to know that the whole thing gets downed in about three searing gulps.

Hank gets his shoes and his truck keys and walks to the door, stops dead when his hand is wrapped around the knob, and stands there for a few lingering beats before turning back around. He climbs into the other bed without another word and doesn't move for the rest of the night.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my past fandom lives I used to be a stickler for people using too many real-life brand names and locations in their fics because it felt “jarring,” but I guess I make my own dumb rules in order to break them. Long story short, recognizable landmarks or franchises felt kinda necessary for an Americana road trip tale, so I’m sorry if it’s bothering anybody lol. Obviously had to have that Cracker Barrel in there, though! It’s as awful and hideously charming as you might imagine (and the breakfast menu is really the only thing worth eating more than once in my opinion, so Connor chose well). 
> 
> Next stop, Tennessee! Our old friend Gavin may be lurking somewhere around the corner...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General warning for vulgar and some degrading language once again, most of it at the hands of one Gavin Reed. I feel like he comes with an automatic warning label, but the man says some real doozies lol. Brief sexual scene of an unfortunate nature but it's consensual despite alcohol being involved and doesn't go into prolonged detail.

  
  
Morning is just beginning to brighten and poke her rosy fingers through the curtains when Connor finally wakes. His body feels too-heavy and exhausted with rest, joints and muscles warm but strained at the same time. The digital clock on the bedside table reads 6:32 AM and he sits up fast enough to see black spots dance in his vision when he registers that Hank’s bed is empty and Sumo is nowhere to be found.

Connor’s shoes and used toothbrush are still in the room, the rest of his worldly possessions wrinkled and creased from sleeping in them all night. When he gets up and paces through the room he finds that Hank’s clothes and belongings are gone and that the dog bowls have disappeared. It’s a nasty feeling, a dreadful ripple of abrupt anxiety that immediately makes him want to fold inward and scream, and then he sees the plastic bottle of orange juice and a vending machine honey bun carefully left on top of the notepad by the motel room’s telephone.

_Out walking Sumo,_ the blocky writing beneath the food and drink reads. _Be ready to roll when we get back. H-_

Connor sinks down on the edge of the bed Hank and Sumo had slept in and leans forward until his head is nearly pressed between his knees. He breathes in, and out, and back in again until his vision clears and the rolling nausea begins to pass. Every cut and contusion on his face feels like it’s throbbing with each beat of his pulse, and Connor wonders what he’d be doing right now if it weren’t for the simple sight of orange juice and a cheap pastry and some ink scrawled on paper.

He doesn’t want to think about it too closely.

Last night’s encounter immediately replays on the backs of his eyelids and he pinches the bridge of his nose despite how much it hurts, trying to will the memory away with the fresh burst of pain. Nothing about any of this makes sense no matter how he spins it. How could you push somebody away and then panic once they were gone?  

“Fuck,” Connor sighs out loud to the empty motel room, and then laughs as he falls backwards onto the unmade bed. “Who am I?” he asks the smoke-stained ceiling. “What’s the fucking point?”

The ceiling doesn’t have an answer, but the door mechanism beeps as it’s unlocked from the outside. Connor scrambles off Hank’s bed and promptly trips on his sneakers still lying in the floor, tumbling down into the carpeted space between the two mattresses. He stays where he lands and braces for impact when Sumo spots him from the doorway.

The dog is on him in two seconds flat, licking Connor’s face and hands and snuffling in his hair. His shaggy coat is slightly damp and smells like morning dew and cold mountain air, and Connor is partway tempted to smother his face in Sumo’s side and never come back up again for another breath.

Hank stands just inside the doorway looking mildly bewildered, already dressed for the day and fidgeting some with Sumo’s leash in his hands. He doesn’t even bother to ask what Connor’s doing on the motel room floor. “I left out some breakfast if you want it,” he says a bit lamely. “No five star buffet at the Motel 6, sad to say.”

Connor pops his head out from behind Sumo and tries to put on the most heartfelt smile he can muster this early in the morning with a busted face, and somehow the mere sight of Hank standing there is enough to make it easy.

“How’d you know honey buns are my favorite?” he lies, but in this moment it’s the truest thing he’s said in days. He would eat a thousand goddamn honey buns if Hank was the one who brought them to him, and this sudden knowledge makes Connor’s lungs hitch and squeeze in his chest.

“Lucky guess, maybe,” Hank says, tipping his head to the side so his hair falls out from behind one ear. He doesn’t move any further into the room and angles his body toward the door again, casting a long shadow across the lamp-lit wall. “I’m gonna go ahead and check out so we can get back on the road,” he says. “You and Sumo wanna meet me downstairs in a few?”

“That’s fine,” Connor says, hating how weirdly polite he sounds. _He has no clue_ , the silent voice in his head shrieks without prompting. “We’ll head down to the rig as soon as I brush my teeth.”

Hank nods at that and leaves Sumo’s leash hanging on the door handle, then walks back out into the cold morning and latches the door behind him. For his part, Sumo is all smiles and rowdy energy, and Connor finally relents and buries his face in the dog’s fur now that Hank is gone.

“Oh my God,” he says, voice tiny and muffled in Sumo’s side. “Fucking— _honey buns_.”

Sumo whines, bowing over to nudge his muzzle against Connor’s shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings,” Connor laments, cheek still pressed flush against a wall of warm dog. “He didn’t do anything wrong, I just—I got a lot of fucking baggage to carry around, you know? And I hate it.”

Sumo doesn’t say anything but Connor can tell he’s listening, big head craned around to level the human with a gently somber look. _It’s okay, kid. We all fuck up sometimes._

“Good talk,” Connor says, patting Sumo’s chest as he climbs back onto his feet. “Being stuck in the truck all day is going to be absolutely amazing.”

Connor forgets to drink his orange juice before he brushes his teeth and figures that alone sets the tone for the morning. He bundles his breakfast into his jacket pockets and puts his shoes on one at a time, then clips Sumo’s leash onto his collar before stopping at the door. Lingering, Connor turns to glance back at the bedside table and lets out a soft swear.

He quickly walks over and stares at the motel notepad for a long moment before ripping the top sheet off, swiping a fingertip over the tiny pinpricks where the ink bled through to the other side of the paper. Folds it up until it’s small enough to slip into his empty wallet and tucks it behind a photo so old it’s starting to go yellow.

“Don’t tell,” Connor says to Sumo, scratching around his ears. He somehow feels giddy and guilty all at once. “This is our little secret, capiche?”  

The St. Bernard only wags his tail, beating Connor in the kneecaps with it like the business end of a broom. That’s as good a pact as Connor’s ever made, and with that settled they shut the door behind them, taking the stairs down to the parking lot two at a time.  
  


* * *  
  


Hank’s rig crosses the state line into Tennessee about an hour after sunup, but Connor had been watching rolling hills rise and fall around them for a lot longer than that. The state’s famous greenery isn’t so verdant now that autumn has arrived, everything in Appalachia long since stained shades of red and golden ochre instead. The first manmade structure they set eyes on beyond the invisible border is a weather-beaten sign that heralds _Welcome to Tennessee, the Volunteer State!_

“Welcome to Teen-uh-say,” Connor mimics in a poor imitation of a southern drawl. “Home of Graceland, Jack Daniels, and the Grand Ole Opry.”

Hank has been silent most of the morning, not bothering to say much more than a word or two as needed. He glances at Connor now before focusing back on the road where they’ve been following a sixteen-head horse trailer with Georgia plates for the past fifteen miles.

“What do you know about Graceland and the Grand Ole Opry?” he asks with a snort. “We’re a long fucking way from Detroit.”

“More than you’d give me credit for,” Connor shoots back. “I didn’t fall out of the sky yesterday. Besides, what do _you_ know about Graceland and the Grand Ole Opry?”

Hank cracks a little smile at that, but not at Connor’s expense. He’s got a look on his face like his mind has wandered somewhere else beyond the walls of this truck cab into another time and place. “Who do you think I was named after?” he asks. “The legend himself—Hiram King Williams.”

Connor chews on his lip for a moment, poised thoughtful. “Your mother named you after a country music star who died before he was 30 from overdosing in the back of a Cadillac?”

“If the shoe fits…” Hank says with a shrug before laughing hollowly to himself. “She was a good woman, despite her few flaws—she loved her old country western records.”

Some of the tension from before seems to have melted away, slipping through the cracks of whatever memory Connor had managed to break into. He wonders if he’s allowed to ask more, if Hank will dole out another little morsel of information about his mother or father or maybe even the ex-wife who fucked her therapist. Like some truck driver communion, a tiny wafer of history dropped on the tip of his tongue for a taste.

“What about your folks?” Hank asks before Connor can find his voice again.

“They’re dead,” Connor says flatly, because it’s true and he’s been living with it for a long time now. “Lost them both in a car accident when I was ten.”

“Shit!” Hank says, loud enough that Sumo jolts awake in the back. “Are you fucking serious?”

Connor stares straight ahead out the windshield at nothing in particular. “Yes,” he says. “The road was wet. They were driving me home from rehearsals for the Christmas Eve play we were having at school that year.”

It all sounds so much more clinical than emotional, like he’s reading it off a piece of paper instead of seeing the crash play out in fragmented bursts of image and sound in his memory. “It happened twenty years ago,” he says, bringing a thumb up to his mouth to chew around a hangnail there. “It doesn’t really weigh me down too much anymore.”

Hank has gone oddly quiet but the tension in his jaw looks sharp enough to cut through glass. “Maybe there’s hope for me yet,” he says, and then immediately blinks when he realizes what he’d uttered out loud.

Connor’s mind flashes back to the night before last in an instant, when he’d been kneeling in the rain in a dirty overnight lot and Hank had held out an open hand. _Have you ever lost everything?_

“Don’t,” Hank cuts in before he can speak. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, I—I fucking can’t.” He doesn’t say about what, but heaves out a broken sort of sigh. “I’m real sorry about what happened to your parents. No kid should have to go through something like that.”

“Nobody should have to go through it,” Connor amends for him. He almost wants to reach out and touch Hank’s arm, maybe press a finger into that old pink scar there and draw out any untold memories through a thinner part of the other man’s skin. But right now Hank looks like he’d snap like a steel trap if so much as a feather fell on him, and Connor’s not quite willing to pry open the jaws of a beast he can’t look square in the eye.

“We’ll stop in a few hours, find somewhere to wash your clothes,” Hank says simply, all the rest of their conversation seemingly forgotten now. He doesn’t sound mad—just tired. The kind of tired that sinks down into the marrow of your bones and can’t be slept or shaken off.

Connor nods wordlessly and looks out the window at the sprawl of Tennessee’s corner of Appalachia, given nothing to do but watch the world pass them by as he waits.

  
  
  


There’s a rest stop not too far outside the Knoxville city limits, grimy and run-down, covered in graffiti so ancient and layered some of it probably dates back to the fucking 80s. A few other sleeper rigs are parked in the truck lot but Hank unloads Sumo and grabs his leash and collapsible water dish for a longer walk, shoving the latter into his back pocket. It’s colder up here in the mountains than it was in the Carolinas and he shrugs on a denim jacket lined with vintage fleece that likely saw the start of the second world war.

“We’ll hoof it the rest of the way into town,” he tells Connor, squinting at him despite the overcast sky. “You cold or you good?”

Connor stuffs his hands down deeper into his jacket pockets and is sorely tempted to pull the hood up over his ears. “I’m alright,” he says, bag of dirty laundry swinging in the crook of one elbow, but his teeth clatter together on the last consonant when he says it.

“Christ’s sake,” Hank says, passing over Sumo’s leash before climbing back up into the truck. When he returns he’s carrying a thicker flannel jacket in dark green plaid, handing it over to Connor without any fanfare. “Try that on for size.”

Connor’s not small by any stretch at six feet even, but the jacket still hangs down to his thighs and the sleeves nearly cover his hands. He doesn’t mind it being too big; the extra weight and warmth works fast to ward off the chill and he zips up the front all the way to his neck, unable to help himself from breathing in the scent steeped into the flannel-lined collar. It just smells like—Hank.

“It’s perfect,” Connor says. He’s afraid he actually means it, but Hank looks skeptical.

“Whatever you say, kid,” he says, but Connor catches the barest flush at the base of his throat and the tips of his ears again, unable to tell if it’s Hank’s complexion gone ruddy in the cold or something else altogether. “I never wear that old thing but once in a blue moon, so if you like it you can keep it.”

They start off at a steady walk, three motley travelers headed into the little clutch of shops and a strip mall a half-mile or so up the road. A pickup truck comes up from behind on their left and lays on the horn as it whirs past with its bass speakers thumping. Hank flips the bird in the same moment Connor throws up a pageant wave.

Connor may be a sight to behold in his borrowed baggy sweatpants and would-be lumberjack coat, but he’s warm and feels strangely light without the weight of the unknown hanging over his head like a noose. The situation is a far cry from being ideal and he may owe Hank more than he even knows, but at least he’s in good company.

More than that, even—he’s on his way back to Detroit.

And so they split a cheap sub sandwich and a bag of chips and sit at one of the folding tables in the laundromat while Connor’s clothes take a tumble through the washing machine. There’s nobody else inside so Hank ushers Sumo in from the cold and lifts the table to loop his leash around the leg.

They pass idle small talk back and forth like odd-numbered playing cards. Connor sips on his soda while he watches Hank hand a few potato chips down to the dog and wonders how far off-schedule he’s put Hank since they crossed paths. Minutes, hours, maybe even a day’s worth of driving time. Whichever the case, Hank hasn’t endeavored to bring it up, and Connor notices him taking another swig from his mysteriously refilled flask while he’s putting his wet clothes in the dryer and feeding a dollar bill into the quarter machine.

“Where do you hide your booze in the truck?” he asks conversationally, feeling a little peevish at the return of the flask. Hank only crumples up his sandwich wrapper in one fist and lets out a burp.

“Screwtop bottle in the toolbox,” he says. “Got it labeled _glass cleaner_.”

“Impressive,” Connor says, closing the dryer door and starting it up.

Hank smiles just a hair. “You don’t mean that.”

“No, I think it’s counterintuitive for a career driver to make a regular habit of drinking hard liquor before noon, but I don’t guess that’s any of my business.”

Hank laughs this time, unbothered. “You sure make it sound like it’s your business.”

Connor tries to glare at him but gives up in a handful of seconds and wanders back over to sit across from Hank at the folding table. “I was voted Most Opinionated in high school,” he says. “Then the debate team in college kicked me out for, as I recall from the severance sheet, _‘too many instances of callous underhand comments made at the unsuspecting opponent’s personal expense.’_ ”

“No kidding,” Hank says, leveling Connor with a pointed look that makes his hands fidget under the table.

“Listen,” Connor breathes out like a slashed tire, “If you’re talking about last night, I’m—”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Hank says firmly. “Done is done, and I know it was coming from a…bad fucking place, to put it lightly. You just—y’know.” He looks away at the tumbling dryer, line of his throat bobbing up and down while his jaw works. “I don’t blame you for not trusting people, it just caught me off guard. Nobody wants to think about that kinda stuff but you sure put it on my mind.”

Hank flattens his palms on the table and inspects the veins and scars on the backs of his hands before finally glancing up at Connor, bottom lip caught between his teeth. “If I ever implied anything, or you ever felt like I was going to—fuckin’ Christ, if you ever thought I might… _hurt_ you, or take advantage of the situation, I’m here to say that’s not the case. At all.”

Connor can’t quite hear anything anymore beyond the fading echo of Hank’s voice. It feels like they’re standing in a concrete tunnel that extends miles in either direction. His heart is thudding again but not out of any fear, and he stares hard at the far wall, reading and rereading the dry cleaning services pricing until he finds what he wants to say.

“I know,” he answers, almost too quiet to hear over the din in the laundromat. “But you of all people, after everything you’ve done—you didn’t deserve to hear it. I let old demons catch up with me in a moment when they shouldn’t have.”

He shuffles back over to the folding table and sinks into his empty chair across from Hank. His hands are still spread on the table, and Connor’s tempted to reach out and touch one, but he won’t. He won’t.

“If I was really afraid,” he says instead, “I wouldn’t be here at all. You’ve shown me nothing but kindness when I—I can’t really give you anything worthwhile in return.” Connor swallows thickly, mouth gone dry all of a sudden. He can’t help but laugh even though it sounds partly broken. “Some days I feel like I’m all used up and there’s nothing left.”

Hank only nods, letting those words settle between them. He reaches into his shirt pocket and comes back out with something in his hand. When he opens his palm, there’s one of the butter mints he’d stolen from the Motel 6 the night before.

“I think we have that in common,” he says, sliding his hand across the tabletop so Connor can take the candy. He gets another from his pocket and pops it out of the wrapper and straight into his mouth. “You don’t owe me anything, Connor. Not even the time of fuckin’ day, if you were so inclined to keep that to yourself.”

Connor carefully unwraps his butter mint and places it on his tongue, letting the chalky sugar dissolve in a burst of sweet spearmint. His eyes trail over the laundromat walls again, painted avocado green and dotted with permanent marker graffiti that hasn’t been covered up by maintenance yet. _I Am Alive_ , one of the handwritten messages says.

There’s also an old analog clock hanging above the door, still faithfully ticking away even though half its minute hand is missing.

“It’s a quarter to one, Hank,” Connor says simply. “On Thursday, October 25th.”

Hank blinks, confused for a split second, and sputters out a disbelieving little laugh. The mirth crinkled at the corners of his eyes feels like a small blessing and Connor does his best to commit it to memory in case he doesn’t ever see it again.

“So it is,” Hank says just as the dryer buzzes. Sumo startles out of a nap, paws sweeping along the tile floor as his legs jerk in surprise. “Let’s go ahead and get out of here.”

Connor gathers his few things—one t-shirt, a pair of briefs, two socks, and his freshly-laundered jeans. Folds each one and slides them back into his makeshift laundry bag. Hank and Sumo are waiting for him by the door, and Hank holds it open so Connor can walk out first into the bright chill of early afternoon.

  
  
  


Back at the rest stop lot Connor quickly changes into his briefs and jeans but pulls Hank’s plaid coat back on over his sweatshirt. When he emerges from the sleeper cab still wearing it, Hank only raises an eyebrow but goes back to logging numbers in his book and checking a few gauges on the side of the tanker.

“Gonna be a few minutes yet,” he says around a yellow pencil clamped between his teeth. He’s jimmying a small lever and squinting at a meter through his reading glasses before jotting down the readout there. “You can walk around and kill time if you want, maybe take Sumo if there’s anybody sketchy out fuckin’ around.”

Connor peers around the rest stop, taking in the few other silent rigs and a couple RVs parked nearby. There’s a busted vending machine by the bathrooms and the handicap stall has been permanently chained shut and padlocked. He doesn’t see hide nor hair of another living person until he happens to glance out toward some old picnic tables and spots a lone man sitting on top of one of them, idly puffing on a cigarette.

Connor formulates his plan immediately.

“We’ll take a walk around the grassy area,” he says, picking up Sumo’s leash and urging him along with renewed eagerness. “C’mon, big boy—regular exercise is medicine for the soul.”

Hank scoffs at that but keeps working, shooing them off with a flap of his hand. “Don’t let him go after any squirrels,” he says around the pencil between his teeth. “I’ll have to pop your shoulder back in the socket.”

Connor leads Sumo up around the perimeter of the grassy area and where it meets the edge of a wilder wooded patch. The forest is mostly scrub and pine trees, dead and brown, hardly any of the vibrant foliage they’d seen along the highway coming up. There is one solitary hardwood maple deeper into the tree line, leaves so crimson they look like a dash of blood smeared across the backdrop of dormant woodland.

After a few minutes of sniffing around and lollygagging, Sumo does his business and Connor takes that as a cue to start directing their path toward the handful of sun-bleached picnic tables. He takes his time and then slowly begins closing in at a leisurely walk, only pausing to bend over and pick up a red maple leaf from the grass. He knows the smoking man has been watching him the whole time.

From a few dozen yards Connor can make out something wrapped around the man’s wrist, maybe a ribbon or piece of rope, but he won’t know for sure until he gets closer. The grass under the picnic table had been left uncut over the rainier summer months and is still long even though it’s dead and shriveled now.

Before Connor can even open his mouth to say hello, the man stubs out his second cigarette on the bench between his boot heels and spits into the grass.

“Hey dipshit,” he calls out in a coarse voice. “What the fucking fuck are you looking at?”

_Nothing_ , Connor wants to say immediately, but then the ribbon around the man’s wrist tugs and he realizes it’s no ribbon at all, but a thin purple nylon leash. A bell jingles and when the dead grass around the table rustles and moves Connor stops dead. Instead of any number of creatures large or small he and Sumo were expecting to pop up and greet them, he watches in amazement as a little tabby cat sits up on its haunches like a prairie dog and sniffs the air.

“Holy shit,” Connor blurts out just as Sumo stumbles in kindred surprise. “That’s a cat on a leash.”

“You’ve never seen a fucking cat before?” the man asks, hands busy sliding another smoke out of his pack. He sticks it in the corner of his mouth and cups a hand around the tip to bring a BIC flame up. “Looks like somebody must’ve cold-clocked the sense out of you pretty recently.”

The cat hunkers back down in the grass and slinks under the table, peeking out at Connor and Sumo with bright green eyes. The leash is clipped to a tiny purple harness buckled around its chest and shoulders and Connor wonders for a moment if he’s dreaming.

“I was wondering if I could bum a smoke,” he says distractedly, still watching the cat. He doesn’t even register the ugly swear and disbelieving snort of laughter that comes out of the other guy until their eyes happen to meet and it becomes clear that Connor’s asking seriously.

“Shit, you’re a bold motherfucker,” the man says. He has a crooked scar across the bridge of his nose and three-day-old stubble, looks like he probably makes concrete shoes for the mob in his spare time, but it’s a risk Connor’s willing to take for a goddamn cigarette. There’s a tiny cat on a leash and the only way this situation could get any weirder is if it was a dancing monkey with an organ grinder.

“What the hell,” the guy says after a few seconds of watching Connor under hooded lids. He exhales two streams of smoke from his nose and taps another cigarette from the pack before holding it out. “Only because you look like you really fucking need it.”

“Thanks,” Connor says, accepting the smoke while the man gestures for him to take a seat on the other side of the table.

“Watch your dog,” he says in a clear warning, sliding his cheap lighter across the faded wood as he eyeballs Sumo. “My cat ain’t a pussy.”

Connor lights up and sucks so hard on the filter he thinks he can feel that first pull of nicotine all the way down to the soles of his feet. It’s ecstasy. It’s so good he has to close his eyes and focus on not coming in his clean pants right here on a picnic bench at a rest stop in Tennessee. More than that, Connor’s so spellbound he doesn’t even register the fact that Hank’s been making a steady beeline for him ever since he looked up from his truck gauges and saw two familiar figures and one unfamiliar one sitting far too close together in the distance.

“What’s its name?” Connor asks as he exhales. “The cat.”

“Whatever,” the man answers, rolling both shoulders.

Connor opens his eyes just wide enough to stare.

“Godzilla, Breakfast, Pillow Princess, Roadkill, Crunch Wrap Supreme, Lil’ Shit,” the guys lists off, still puffing on his cig like a chimney. “Sometimes if I’m feeling generous she’s—Hank _motherfucking_ Anderson!”

“You can bet your fucking ass,” Hank’s voice rumbles, and Connor nearly pitches backward off the picnic bench. He drops his cigarette on the table and scrambles to pick it up again before it rolls off into the dry grass. “What the fuck are you doing out here, Reed?”

The guy sitting on the table lets out a colorful stream of curses and throws his hands up in the air. “Jesus fucking Christ, can a man not take a fucking smoke break in peace for five goddamn minutes? Why aren’t _you_ sitting in a nursing home somewhere gumming on somebody’s wrinkled dick?”

Hank seamlessly flips the bird and stops at Connor’s side, looking down at him and Sumo instead of their new acquaintance with most of the color drained out of his face. “You know Reed?” he asks, voice cut with as much quiet panic as palpable horror.

“No— _no!_ ” Connor says, shaking his head for emphasis. “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life. I just—God, I really needed a smoke, and I saw he had a pack so we came over to…introduce ourselves?”

Reed looks between Connor and Hank with his mouth hanging open, lit cigarette burning down to the filter between his finger and thumb. “You two are together?” he asks, incredulous. “I’ll be damned. Anderson, you dirty old bastard—did you sit on the kid’s face?”  

Hank bristles hard enough that he takes a menacing step forward. “Reed,” he warns. “I swear to Christ I’ll slash every fucking tire on your rig and piss in the fuel tank if you don’t shut the fuck up and show some common respect.”

“Take it easy, grandpa, you know I was just messing around,” Reed says with an ugly laugh, but he’s cowed somewhat as he scrapes the ember off the butt-end of his smoke. He reaches out and pats the empty spot next to him. “Take a load off, would you? Before you have coronary.”

Hank ignores the offer but takes a seat on the other side of the table next to Connor anyway, straddling the bench between both legs. “Of all the times and places for me to run into a little shitheel like you,” he grumbles. “And by the way, _yeah_ Connor here is with me, but we’re carpooling back to Detroit.”

“That’s one hell of an Uber ride,” Reed says, reaching into a jacket pocket to pull out of a stick of gum. He folds it in half on his tongue and doesn’t offer a piece to anybody else. “Fowler know you’re keeping a pet on company hours?”

“Go get bent,” Hank says, less intimidating now because he only reaches up to pinch between his eyes. “What Jeff doesn’t know in this case won’t hurt him, unless you were wanting somebody to leave an anonymous tip about that load of chop shop parts you’ve been ferrying back and forth across the Mason-Dixon Line for the past six months.”

That catches Reed’s attention. “Maybe you were a detective in another life, Anderson,” he says, letting out a low whistle. “But I’ll tell you this—don’t go sticking your nose up my ass unless you want it to come away dirty, you got it?”

“That’s fine,” Hank says lightly, watching Reed down the bridge of his nose. “So long as the understanding is mutual.”

Connor is looking between Hank and Reed like he’s watching a particularly gripping tennis match. “Am I missing something here?” he asks, just as Reed’s cat takes the initiative to jump up on the table with a little jingle of her bell harness. “How do you two even know each other?”

“We’re both contracted out of the same freight company back in Detroit,” Hank says, running a hand through his hair in something akin to exasperation. “Unfortunately for me, Gavin and I cross paths regularly in our line of work.”  

“Go maul him, Zilla,” Reed says to his cat, tweaking the tip of her tail as she passes. It’s perhaps the kindest thing Connor’s heard come out of his mouth since he walked up in the first place.

Zilla, by no extension of her owner’s misplaced social graces, promptly flops over in front of Connor and pushes her face against his hand for pets. He scratches around her ears and along her back for a few moments, surprised at how rabbit-soft the white markings on her face and chest are.

“Little hussy,” Reed grumbles, snapping his gum between his teeth while his cat purrs up a storm. “I should’ve left you in that dumpster in Des Moines.”

“I’d say the same thing to your mother,” Hank says, sticking a finger out for Zilla to touch with the pad of one white paw. He only laughs when Reed calls him every foul name in the book.

Connor sizes up this so-called Gavin Reed, still sitting hunched against the chill on top of the picnic bench. He can’t be much older than Connor himself with a headful of untidy brown hair, body obviously trim and solid under his clothes despite a bad smoking habit and life spent on the road. His face is a fucking mess, though—nose probably broken twice if not more, and there’s an old white scar in the cupid’s bow of his top lip. He looks like he might’ve gone through a window at some point, and with all the shit he talks, Connor figures that theory is more likely than not.

He absently reaches up and touches his own cheek, wondering if this is what he’ll look like when the bruising and residual swelling finally fades away. Chewed up and spit back out by the everlasting shit show called life.

“Hey, so what the fuck happened to your face?” Reed asks without preface, and Connor’s hand drops into his lap as his eyes blink back into focus.

“I—uh, had an unfortunate run-in with a guy at a truck stop in South Carolina.” Hank’s warmth beside him feels like some kind of silent reassurance, a promise to keep the bigger truth held tightly between just the two of them. “He robbed me blind before he split, and…Hank was kind enough to let me hitch a ride with him from there.”

Reed’s eyes are doubtfully narrow but he doesn’t say anything more on the subject. He only stands up from his perch and hops down to the ground, and when he does Zilla gets up and promptly jumps up on his shoulder like a furry feline parrot. Connor gapes in amazement. Hank shakes his head and mutters something under his breath, long-suffering.

“If you’re in town for a couple more hours, there’s a bar up the street running happy hour,” Reed says, leveling Hank with a peculiar sort of look that makes his eyes flash. It’s not even two o’clock in the afternoon. “What do you say we all grab a tall one?”

“I’d say you deserve to drink alone, and dogs and cats aren’t allowed in joints like that,” Hank says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ve got a tight schedule to keep.”

Reed scoffs and waves him off. “They’ll be fine for a half-hour, it’s not the middle of July in fuckin’ Florida. I’ll buy first round.”

Hank sighs and looks at Connor, who looks back at him with an unreadable expression.

“What do you say?” Hank asks, like the mere suggestion is against every ounce of his better judgement.

Connor shrugs. He’s thinking about the flask in Hank’s pocket but has always been hard-pressed to turn down a free beer. “One quick drink won’t hurt anything.”

Reed thumps the top of the picnic table twice with his knuckles and leads the way back to the rest stop lot, letting his cat jump down into his arms for the ride. “Meet you there in ten,” he says.  
  


* * *  
  


In darker moments throughout his life, Connor’s been in some rough and seedy piece-of-shit bars before, where the bartender on duty kept a loaded shotgun under the counter and the front door didn’t latch anymore from being kicked in too many times. Standing now in front of a place called _Jimmy’s_ , he thinks this is by far the shittiest one he’s ever laid eyes on.

Gavin acts like it’s just another dive off the main street but it’s more like a rat hole carved into the side of a concrete building. The entire front walk outside smells like piss even in the cooler weather and probably reeks to high hell in the summertime. Most of the barstools are half-busted or standing on three legs and Connor thinks he hears broken glass crunching under his shoes when they walk inside, but the room is far from empty even at two in the afternoon. Almost every pair of eyes in the place swivels around to stare when they walk inside.

Connor catches Hank’s eye and a shared look stretches between them. “I think this is a locals-only joint,” Connor murmurs, just loud enough for Hank to hear.

“We won’t stay long,” Hank says, and then plasters a genteel sort of southern-charm smile on his face when he takes a seat at the bar and greets the bartender. It looks so real and Hank’s voice sounds so steeped in something twangy that Connor would’ve sworn straight up and down he was born and bred in these parts if he didn’t know better. Even Gavin’s mouth twitches some, but he gets on with ordering the first round anyway.

Connor immediately feels like a foreign transplant with two rough-edged truckers at his side, a fish thrown so far out of water that he may have to start growing tadpole legs to get through this, and then he remembers the sight of his own reflection in the mirror from earlier that morning. If anything, he probably looks like he’s been through his fair share of barroom brawls before.

Either that or a battered woman, but Connor’s really hoping it’s the former instead.

Hank pushes a cold beer in a pint glass down the bar until it’s in Connor’s hand. Two seconds later the bartender is throwing three shot glasses out on the scarred wood and topping them off with tequila.

Gavin picks his up and says, “Cheers to your face,” in Connor’s general direction before knocking it back. The deepened crease between Hank’s eyebrows has returned but he picks his shot up and follows suit with ease, gently hissing around the burn. They both look down the bar at Connor and he wasn’t planning on slamming any of the hard stuff today, but picks up the shot and swallows it in one gulp anyway.

“One more,” Gavin says to the bartender, and somehow one more turns into two more, maybe three or four more, and Connor’s beer glass never seems to stop refilling itself no matter how much he tries to empty it. The bar starts feeling warmer and more pleasant with each passing minute and Hank is laughing a big beautiful laugh and clapping him so hard on the shoulder he nearly falls off his barstool.

Connor blinks and tries to clear the bright haze from his vision, giggling about something he already forgot and leaning far enough into Hank that their sides are pressed flush together. Hank is as solid as a fucking tree and probably almost as big around as one, and Connor’s tempted to wrap his arms around him and hang on, just to hang on to _something_. One of Hank’s broad hands circles around to press warm against the small of his back, thumb slipped underneath the edge of Connor’s coat, and he sways on his seat and wonders what the fuck is happening to him.

Hank has been too kind, too selflessly good, and it doesn’t seem like a logical allowance in the quilted chaos of Connor’s thirty-one years of life. Everybody has always wanted something, and if they didn’t get what they wanted they simply got up and walked away without ever turning back. His parents had been an exception to that rule, of course, before they’d both died in a split second stroke of ill-fated luck. And then Amanda had found him.

But Amanda’s disappointment sometimes feels like more of a burden than being abandoned, even from nearly a thousand miles away. Stifling, almost crushing in its heaviness only because she’d stayed in Connor’s life long enough to actually care.

Two seats away Gavin is telling a filthy joke about a one-legged prostitute named Eileen and whatever sliver of buoyancy Connor still had at the forefront of his mind takes a nosedive straight into the dirty floor of the bar. He slides off his stool, uneven on his own feet, and can’t quite manage to undo the zipper on his coat all the way even though he’s starting to sweat.

“Hey,” Hank says, holding out an arm as if to catch him. “You alright, kid? Do you need anything?”

“ _No,_ ” Connor slurs, and that’s the fucking problem right there. He doesn’t want to need Hank’s generosity or his handouts, his goodness or his goddamn steadiness that had been staked down into the tumult of Connor’s life like an anchor dropped in a hurricane. He doesn’t need his money or his honey buns or his _you’re a riot, kid_ , even though it’s the best fucking thing that’s happened to him in years.

“M’going to the bathroom,” is all Connor says, just barely making out the sign on the wall before staggering off in that direction. His sneakers stick to hardwood and the walls seem to shimmer and shift on their own accord, almost like the sides of an animal billowing out with each new breath.  Connor pushes into the men’s room finds it empty, but he doesn’t take a leak or lock himself in one of the stalls, he just slides back against the cracked tile wall and waits.

Maybe he dozes off, maybe he just stops thinking for a while, but at some point the door is squealing open and one of the patrons is walking in, giving Connor a passing onceover before going to unzip his fly at the urinal. He’s another middle-aged faceless nobody in jeans and a dark coat, but his wallet’s clipped to a chain strung through his belt loop and that’s all Connor needs to know.

“Hey man,” he says from where he’s slumped on the floor, head almost too heavy to lift up on his neck. “You got a minute? I’ll suck you off for a twenty…cut it down to fifteen for a handy if that’s your thing.”

The stranger at the urinal finishes pissing and shakes dry before zipping up again. “Some people ‘round here would kill you dead just for saying that,” he says.

Connor laughs and tips his head back against the cold tile as the man rinses his hands and walks out without another word. “Believe me,” he says to the empty room, “they’ve already tried.”

And Connor hates himself, he hates himself with every cell and atom in his body, but he knows it’s the only way to put anything in his pocket. Maybe in some other life, as distant and far-off from this one as possible, he won’t have to make this decision again—maybe there will be a time where he gets up off the bathroom floor, dusts himself off, and walks back out into the afternoon with every desperate measure he didn’t have to make absolved and forgiven. But right now he’s entirely numb to it, caught in this cyclical web with no other way out, and karma has never been particularly kind.

The bathroom door opens again a few minutes later. Connor watches a pair of scuffed boots walk across the floor until they’re standing in front of him.

“You the cocksucker?” the new john asks, plain as day. Connor almost laughs again and tells him to fuck off until he sees a crisp bill folded in neat thirds between the man’s two middle fingers. “Better make it quick before I decide my money spends better elsewhere.”

Connor only gestures to the open stall to his right. “That a twenty?” he slurs out as he pushes himself to his feet, squinting at the folded bill to no avail. “C’mon over here for some…privacy.”

“You’re a lush little bitch, huh?” the man says like he’s casually remarking on the fine mountain weather. He braces his feet on either side of the commode so Connor can slink in and lock the door behind them. “Fair warning, if you hurl on my cock I’ll have to kick your teeth in.”

“Yee haw,” Connor says, unsteadily sinking down to his knees. He’s far too fucking drunk for this, but maybe it’s best to go through all the usual motions when he can hardly see straight. Hopefully he won’t remember any part of it later, the whole thing swirled down into the endless void of all his bad dreams.

He fumbles with the guy’s zipper until the john swears and slaps his hands away, yanking it down himself. “Hurry the fuck up,” he says, but his tune changes when Connor reaches up and palms his cock through the fabric of his boxers, teasing his fingers in the opening to stroke his bare skin.

“That’s it, boy,” he sighs out, sagging some on his feet. “Do it up right, now.”

The bathroom door opens a third time with another squeal and they both look up, but the newcomer walks straight to the urinals and spreads his feet before letting a heavy stream loose. Each second passes in a century, but then there’s a flush and the sink runs before the stranger rips off a section of paper towel and pats his hands dry. He pauses by the door for a long moment, still idly drying his hands with the rustled sound of damp paper, and then pitches something into the trash before leaving the way he came in.

Connor wets his bottom lip until it shines and turns back to focus on the business at hand.

  
  
  


Out in the barroom proper where the music’s playing loud and proud, Gavin nearly runs crotch-first into a waitress and snickers as he weaves through the scattered tables back to where Hank’s bent over the bar and staring into the bottom of an empty pint glass.

He doesn’t look up when Gavin slides onto the stool next to him, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon criminal before swirling a swig of lukewarm brew around his mouth like it’s Listerine.

“So, funny fucking story,” Gavin says after he swallows, bracing his palms on the bar to lean down low and peer up at Hank’s face. “You’re gonna love it.”

“I doubt that, Reed,” Hank says, sniffing hard but looking up anyway to set his glass aside. He’s a little buzzed, yeah, but not so drunk that he’s gone blind and bleary, and when he catches sight of Gavin’s shit-eating grin he feels his hackles raise. “What’s blowing hot air up your ass all of a sudden?” he asks. And then, with more urgency, “Have you seen Connor?”

Gavin does a little spin on his stool and laughs. “Uncanny word choice,” he says, just loud enough for their ears. “Considering your boy Connor’s currently on his knees blowing some dude in the bathroom.”  

Hank is off his barstool and standing on both feet before he even thought about moving. “ _What!?_ ”

“Better hurry if you want to catch the show,” Gavin says, flicking half a shelled peanut down the bar with his middle finger. “Maybe you’ll be on time for the grand finale.”

In that moment all the alcohol in Hank’s blood seems to boil away instantaneously, gone in two seconds flat. He turns on his heel, puts his hand against his holstered gun where it’s hidden under the flap of his coat, and somehow manages to make it to the bathroom in about five long strides when any other man would’ve needed to take twenty.

Hank’s mind is moving so fast that time seems to slow to a crawl. He’s aware of his gun, the prickle of sweat on his upper lip, the fact that he’s never felt more sober in his life. He still considers what he’s about to do, as if the person he is on one side of the bathroom door is a separate entity entirely from who he is outside it. And who is he outside it? Fuck all if he even knows that much.

Mostly, he’s thinking about Connor.

In the end, Hank nearly lifts the door off the hinges to get inside, spots the occupied stall and hits it three times with the meaty side of his closed fist so the sliding lock rattles hard enough to catch the attention of whoever’s inside. There’s a small commotion and then an unfamiliar voice shouting, “Fuck off! Shit in the urinal if you gotta go.”

Hank slaps the door again and takes a step back, spying the tail of his green flannel coat kneeling there in front of the commode. “Connor,” he says, eerily calm. “Open this fucking door, please, so I don’t have to kick it down.”

“Who the fuck is that?” the strange voice says this time, and the door unlocks and swings open just wide enough for a balding sack of shit to look out at Hank with his boxers and jeans held up around his thighs. “Get the fuck out of here old man, can’t you see I’m bus—”

Hank wastes no time with punching the door inward straight into the man’s nose. He thinks his hand might be broken but he’ll have to worry about that later, and when the john screams and stumbles backward into the toilet with a splash Hank only shoulders his bulk inside and gets his other fist wrapped in the collar of Connor’s coat.

“Hank?” Connor shouts, motor responses still delayed enough that he doesn’t even have time to dodge or fight Hank’s incoming force. “Get the fuck off of me— _fucking_ _let me go!_ ”

Hank picks him up off the floor with one hand as easily as if he were moving a doll instead of a fully-grown man, and then promptly drags him back out into the bathroom to press him up against the wall.

“Are you hurt?” Hank nearly shouts, staring into Connor’s wide brown eyes, wet and burning with drunken fury. He glances down at his hands, his neck, trying to figure out if Connor had been forced into something against his will. “Did that piece of shit make you—?”

“No, he didn’t _make me_ ,” Connor spits, ripping a crumpled $20 bill out of his pocket and shoving it in Hank’s face. “What do you want me to tell you, Hank?” he hisses, only held upright now by Hank’s hand against his shoulder. “Did you think I was above all that, now? That you’d fixed me?”

Hank blinks, stunned, and watches as the money falls to the floor. “I thought…” he tries to say, and then shakes his head and presses his lips into a line when words die in the back of his throat. He doesn’t know whether to look at Connor or at the wall.

“Well you thought wrong,” Connor says, letting out a wet-sounding sob. He starts to struggle until Hank’s hand moves over to brace against the center of his chest, and somehow the gentle pressure seems to help in calming him down.

“Get me out of here,” Connor says, weakly grappling at Hank’s forearm. “I can’t, I—I’ve got to fucking leave. We have to go.”

Hank glances toward the bathroom stall where he’d already forgotten about the john—probably bleeding all over the fucking place with a broken nose, now, slowly beginning to stir around and gather his wits and britches about him again.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Hank says, all but gathering Connor up under his arm like it’s a wing. “Walk as fast as you can without running and don’t say anything until we’re outside.”

Hank practically carries Connor from the bathroom to the front door, silently signaling to Reed along the way that now isn’t the time to play the fuck around with nothing but his eyes and a sharp look. Gavin seems to get the picture, and after Hank and Connor are outside he dumps a wad of money on the bar and follows them back out into the open air without a backwards glance edgewise.

Reed has to jog to catch up with Hank, already halfway down the block with Connor still firmly held at his side. “What the fuck—?” he tries to say, but Hank doesn’t feel like exchanging war stories or pleasantries right now.

“Rigs,” he says, making headway for the rest stop. God, his hand is really starting to fucking hurt. “We’ve gotta get the hell outta Dodge.”

Connor has started swearing and tripping, not quite able to keep up with Hank’s breakneck speed. “You don’t have to carry me,” he moans, starting to pant as he goes a little green around the gills. “I’m not a fucking child, _Jesus_.”

Hank is halfway tempted to sling him up into a fireman’s carry but knows Connor is heavier than he looks and he’d rather not risk throwing out his back anytime soon. “This is your fucking fault, by the way,” he says to Reed instead, glowering as much as he can with the sun shining in his eyes.

“My fault?” Reed cries, letting out a hoot of laughter. “I hate to break it to you, but I didn’t exactly strong-arm Connie here into sucking cock in the men’s room.”

“You said one round, not fucking seven!” Hank spits, fuming now. “I might be able to hold my liquor but Connor obviously wasn’t up for one of your goddamned hedonistic daytime gauntlet runs after he—after his fucking accident! _Shit!_ ”

The rest stop is finally coming back into view but Hank isn’t slowing down. He doesn’t even know how long they were gone, but the sun looks like it’s sunken a mile in the sky since he last saw it. His schedule is gonna be fucked all to hell, but so long as everything else is he supposes it doesn’t really matter all that much. Thank Christ crude oil doesn’t spoil.

Connor makes it to the edge of the rest stop’s overnight lot before he careens off to the side and vomits all over the sidewalk. It splatters on his shoes and Reed jumps back with a shout as he tries to dart around the mess.

“Fuck, fuck,” Connor keeps saying between dry heaves, coughing and spitting while Hank holds him up off the ground. He hurls again and this time makes it into the grass, body going rigid in Hank’s hands every time his stomach contracts.

“Well buddy, we’ll know for next time that you can’t hold your poison for shit,” Gavin says, standing off to the side with his face screwed up in disgust. “I’m impressed you kept it down that long, what with somebody’s dick crammed down your throat and all.”

“Reed!” Hank barks, rounding on him with blue fire in his eyes. “Now. Is not. The _fucking time_.”  

Connor empties most of his stomach onto the dead lawn and starts swaying again, barely keeping it together. “Just leave me here,” he tells Hank, running a hand across the back of his mouth. His hair’s plastered to his forehead despite the cold air and he’s gone paler than a sheet. “Don’t even bother.”

“Shut up,” Hank says, and then really does hoist Connor up over one shoulder to make the last leg of their trek back to the rig. It’s a hard walk, but he manages to unlock the truck and trundle Connor up into the sleeper despite Sumo’s best attempts to tackle them both. Hank drops him on the bunk like deadweight and props him up on his side, pressing an empty Big Gulp cup into his hand.

“Stay here and puke in that,” Hank gasps, all out of breath. “I gotta run Reed off and then we’re getting the fuck out of Tennessee.”

Down on the ground, Reed is fidgeting with his keys and looking down the street like he’s waiting for an armed cavalry to come stampeding over the hill. There’s an unlit cigarette behind his ear and a hand held over his eyes to block out the sun.

“Is he gonna make it?” he asks, more mockery than any honest concern.

“Maybe,” Hank says, dropping down to sit on the running board so he can catch his wind again. “Probably, if I don’t kill him myself first.”

“Why does he need a fucking chaperone?” Reed asks, finally jamming the cigarette between his teeth before bringing out his lighter. Zilla is watching him from the dashboard of their truck a few parking spots away, sitting in the window like a perfect little sphynx. “He told you himself he’s not a damn kid. Dude’s probably close to my fucking age.”

“I know that,” Hank snaps, and then slowly reaches up to drag a palm over his face. He looks down at the knuckles on his right hand and grimaces, flexing it again to see if it’s broken. Everything moves alright, but it’s going to be bruised and swollen in the morning.

“Listen,” he says, looking somewhere in the vicinity of Reed’s forehead instead of his dark eyes. “He—he just needs somebody to look out for him, okay? Even if it’s an old washed up has-been like me. He fell into my fucking lap the night he got the ever-loving shit beat out of him, and I just couldn’t leave him out there to suffer.”

Gavin scoffs. “If I were you, I’d have dropped him on the ER’s doorstep first thing. Left him with a note at the fire department and bailed the fuck outta there.”

Hank shakes his head. “Not my style,” he says. “I don’t expect you to be emotionally nuanced about this sort of shit, but then again, you didn’t have the heart to dump that damn cat at the pound after you found her—what makes you think I was gonna pawn off a person? Just wash my hands of him and be done?”

“Listen to yourself, Anderson,” Gavin says, flicking ash off the end of his smoke. “A kitten and a full-grown man are a far fucking cry from being anywhere in the same ballpark. One shits in a box and the other gets drunk and tries to whore himself out in the bathroom during happy hour.”

Hank gets up and hitches one fist up on his hip, waving Gavin off with the other. “You’re not understanding what I’m saying.”

Gavin laughs again with his cig clamped in the corner of his mouth. “Oh, I understand just fine,” he says, eyes gleaming in the afternoon sun as he blows out a cloud of smoke. “Crystal fuckin’ clear, as far as I can tell.”

“Oh yeah?” Hank challenges. “Feel free to enlighten me.”

Gavin takes a backward step and flicks his cigarette butt onto the ground, grinding it into the pavement with the toe of his boot. “I think you’ve found yourself a little sugar baby,” he says, and then cuts his eyes up at Hank. “He’s got you wrapped around his finger already.”

Hank feels his stomach drop like an anvil but holds Reed’s gaze steady, unblinking. He can feel the tips of his ears burning but squares his jaw and battens down. “What did I fucking tell you about me slashing every single one of the eighteen wheels on your truck?” he says.

“That you were gonna do it, even though you never did,” Reed says, signing off with a two-fingered salute. He turns and starts walking back over to his rig, heels scuffing along the pavement as he goes. “Deny it all you want but it’s written all over your face, Hanky Panky.”

“Fuck you,” Hank calls after him, watching Reed swing up into the cab of his truck.

“See you and your boyfriend back in Detroit,” Reed says, and cranks over his engine with a roar. Zilla keeps vigil on the dash, and Hank sits and watches the rig pull out of the lot and away until it’s heading southbound on the interstate, getting further and further away until it disappears over the lip of the horizon.

Hank drops his head into his hands and allows himself a few more seconds of misery before he gets up and climbs back into the driver’s seat. Connor is sound asleep in the back and Sumo is looking vaguely scandalized, big head tilted off to the side as he peers at his human. _What the hell has he done now?_

A police siren sounds from somewhere up the street and Hank watches a squad car fly past, headed in the direction they just came from.

“We aren’t sticking around long enough to find out,” he tells Sumo for the hell of it, and starts up the rig before steering her north toward Kentucky.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys really spun me for a loop with all the love you left for the last update. I'm just shaking my head and marveling at how kind you all are! I've never written fic for a larger fandom before in all my years so this is all new hat to me. Thank you so much for your support and kind words and artwork ❤ If you ever want to chat more I'm still hanging out over at @honkforhankcon on tumblr + twitter now, too!


	5. Chapter 5

  
Darkness has settled by the time Connor rouses again, this time with the sour aftertaste of vomit in his mouth and a headache that feels like a tomahawk splitting his skull. At first he doesn’t know where he is, sprawled across something soft and strewn with messy blankets, but the metronomic sound of windshield wipers and then a dog’s soft snout resting on his shoulder confirms he’s back in the rear of Hank’s sleeper.

It’s raining again. The radio is tuned to a different station, streetlamps passing every now and again. Hank’s silhouette is slouched in the seat up front, slowing the rig as he steers them around a curved bend in the road. He doesn’t seem to know that Connor’s awake yet.

Connor blinks against the ceiling and jams the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to push the agony out. A Big Gulp cup falls to the floor when his elbow hits it and Sumo’s ear twitches but he doesn’t move, perfectly warm and content where he’s currently spooning against Connor in the bunk.

“You finally awake back there?” Hank asks, glancing once over his shoulder. “Not gonna puke anymore, are you?”

“No,” Connor groans, sagging against the bed. And then, suddenly remembering most of everything all at once, “Oh, _shit_.”

“Get the damn cup!” Hank yelps but Connor’s not heaving, only wishing he’d die and sink through the floor so he’d never have to face anybody again. He eases himself out from under Sumo and sits up slowly, cranium pounding out a war drum beat the whole way. His mouth is parched and the mending split in his lip feels like it’s going to crack again.

“I’m not gonna be sick,” he tells Hank again. “Coming up there, hold on.”

Connor winds his way up to the front and collapses in the passenger seat, buckling in before he goes to dig around for the bottle of ibuprofen. He necks four tablets dry and then can’t swallow them, eyes gone wide when he looks around and doesn’t see anything to drink. Hank sighs and digs around in his door panel until he pulls out a half-empty bottle of water.

“Dog water,” he says, handing it over to Connor. “Wash it down with that.”

Connor gets the pills swallowed and then slumps back, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch the wet road unfurling in front of them. “I’ve made a fool of myself,” he says, lips barely moving to form the words. “Not for the first time. Definitely won’t be the last.”

Hank stays silent. Connor’s face scrunches up and then one eye slowly cracks open. He stuffs a hand into all his pockets and even checks the ankle band on his right sock, every hiding place coming up empty. “Where’s my twenty dollar bill?”

“You dropped it on the bathroom floor after shoving it in my face,” Hank mumbles, blowing out a sigh. “Didn’t pick it back up again.”

“Fuck,” Connor croaks, tipping his forehead into an open hand. “All that for nothing.”

Hank’s grip tightens around the wheel as his jaw twitches. “Listen, I don’t know how many times we need to have this conversation, but I feel like I haven’t made myself clear,” he says, eyes flashing over at Connor. “At the risk of me beating a dead horse into the ground, here’s the thing: you don’t need to pay me back for anything— _nothing._ Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Connor feels his adrenal glands clench and deliver a tiny surge to his system. He twists around in the seat and faces Hank, the ache exploding behind his eyes even more now that he’s mad, but if Hank wants to fight then by all means, they’re going to have a fucking fight.

“Do you understand that I’m not a child?” Connor nearly shouts. “That you can tell me anything you goddamn want and I don’t have to entertain a single fucking word you say, Hank? _Especially_ when it comes to where and how I get my money?”

“You shouldn’t have to rent yourself out for cash when you’ve got somebody right here willing to help you!” Hank says. “I know you’ve had a hard fucking time and things haven’t been good or easy, hell—but would it absolutely kill you to just let somebody give you a leg up for once? Out of whatever shithole you’ve been rolling around in for Christ knows how long?”

“Maybe I don’t want to be your fucking charity case!” Connor yells. “Do you think I haven’t been patronized by other men and stripped of almost my entire agency already—do you think I _want_ to have everything handed to me for free and held over my head? Maybe toiling around in my own miserable shithole by my own rules is better than indebting myself to one more fucking person on this godforsaken earth!”

Hank’s jaw grits tight enough to crack a molar but his voice drops back down to something composed. “Have I ever—even once, Connor, in the short time we’ve known each other—held something above your head? Tell me one fucking time.”

Connor’s eyes are burning again, and his head hurts so goddamn much he wants to put it through the windshield to make the pain stop. Hank’s right—he’s right, but Connor can’t bring himself to say it. Through the pain and fury he thinks about honey buns and borrowed coats and Hank’s calloused fingertips gently pressing down a bandage to help mend the cut on his nose.

None of it had been asked for, and yet it had been freely given. Selflessly—and for what reason? But what Connor really wants, the one thing he won’t let himself think about too closely when he’s this sober, is something he can’t have. He was foolish to ever let his imagination take it this far, when the dark flush in Hank’s face had only ever been from the cold. Foolish, even if the sensation of Hank’s hand warm and solid against the small of his back in the bar had been so real.  

“Stop the truck,” he says.      

“What?” Hank blurts out, like he must’ve misheard.

“Stop the fucking truck right now,” Connor rasps. “Let me out.”

“To do what?” Hank says, keeping one hand on the wheel while he uses to the other to gesture at the downpour hitting the glass. “It’s pouring goddamn buckets out there.”

“I’ll walk the rest of the way to Michigan if I fucking have to,” Connor says. “But I can’t take one more minute of being some deadweight burden on you.”

Hank has the gall to laugh at that. “A burden?” he asks. “A _burden_ , Connor?”  

“Stop the truck,” Connor says for the third time, almost pleading, and Hank finally does.

Sumo gets up with his tail wagging, eager for a romp despite the rain, but Hank bars an arm between the seats to keep him back. He doesn’t say another word, only watches as Connor shrugs out the green coat and tosses it up on the dash.

There’s a painful welt aching in the back of Connor’s throat and so he doesn’t say anything, because he can’t. He just waits until the truck is idling on the side of some dark road in a state he doesn’t know, then opens the door and lets himself out into the rain to start walking.

He’s soaked to the skin in a matter of seconds but keeps going without any direction, facing the oncoming headlights on the other side of the highway as they whir past. There’s an overpass up ahead and maybe he’ll be able to stay under there for an hour or two until the storm blows over, keep dry and wait for another ride or some small clue about where he’s headed next.

Connor doesn’t bother to pull up the hood on his jacket as heavy raindrops hail against his neck and shoulders. He hears the telltale groan of a rig coming up behind him and passing on his left, but the truck that rumbles by is hauling retail freight and not crude oil. Its wheels send an arc of dirty road water up in the air and Connor only has time to blink before it cascades down on him like a waterfall.

Floodlights suddenly shine on him through the dark, lighting up the whole shoulder of the road. Connor turns and mops water out of his eyes only to see that Hank’s truck has pulled halfway off the road, slowly creeping along behind him at a snail’s pace while he walks. The rig’s flashing hazard lights are on and every car or truck behind it has to pull around and get in the fast lane to get by, most of them laying on the horn and gunning up the highway in a rage.

Connor turns back around and doesn’t stop walking.

When he finally makes it under the overpass the rain cuts out all at once, still hammering away on the concrete structure while cars pass overhead. His clothes are so drenched they’re practically sagging off him, stretched out and stuck to his clammy skin. Hank’s truck continues bringing up the rear and Connor wants to whirl around and scream at him to fuck off and go, but that blistering ache is still behind his eyes and in his throat and he doesn’t trust his voice to work without breaking. All he can do is face ahead and keep moving.

Hank’s rig pulls off the highway and eases to a stop under the overpass, hissing as the air breaks engage and release. The headlights cut out and then the driver’s side door is opening and slamming. Connor can hear Hank’s boots crunching through the rock and gravel on the side of the road but doesn’t look up to greet him.

“Connor,” he calls out, voice echoing off the overpass walls. “Connor!”

Every nerve ending in his body is screaming for him to stop, but Connor stares at his shoes and keeps going. Only when Hank’s footsteps pick up speed and break into a jog does he finally stall long enough to turn and bring his eyes up to watch the other man approach. His stomach twists up into a knot when he sees that Hank’s carrying the green plaid jacket in his hands.

Hank slows back down to a walk when he sees Connor watching him, closing the last few paces between them in more measured stride. He twists the flannel material between his fingers and bites the corner of his bottom lip before simply holding it out, eyes anywhere but Connor’s face.

“Just…take this, at least,” he murmurs, warm breath clouding on the cold air. “So you don’t freeze to fuckin’ death.”

Connor looks at the plaid and then up at Hank. He gradually reaches out and takes the coat, drawing the dry fabric against him like a safety blanket before he remembers Hank probably intended for him to put it on.

He shrugs into the sleeves despite his sopping clothes underneath and puts his right hand in the pocket on reflex. His fingertips brush against something small and crinkly, and when he pulls it out and opens his hand to look he finds another one of those damned Motel 6 butter mints.

“Where the hell do you keep getting these?” he asks before he can stop himself, stuffing the candy back into his pocket with a huff.

Hank’s shoulders raise and drop. “One more for the road, I guess,” he says, clearing his throat. He takes a single step back and then stops, wavering against some invisible line marked on the ground. “Check the other pocket.”

Connor’s eyes flash up. “What?”

“The other pocket,” Hank mumbles, watching as Connor’s left hand sinks down into the coat again. He pulls out a handful of butterfly bandages and then another tiny slip of paper folded in half.

Connor unfolds the paper and gazes at the ten-digit number scrawled there in Hank’s handwriting.

“You call me if you ever need anything,” Hank says quietly. “I may not be anywhere nearby, but I’ll get there eventually—you can count on that much.”

Connor only nods, biting down on the inside of his cheek. Fuck knows he’s trying to be a man about all this, but focusing on the tiny pinch of pain is the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

“Try and take care of yourself, kid,” Hank says, taking another backward step. He makes as if to turn away and head to the truck, but then stops and looks visibly rooted to the spot by something Connor can’t see. Hank fights it and loses, because at the end of his internal struggle he only ever so slowly holds up an open arm.

Connor stares, already visibly shivering in his coat, and doesn’t move.

Something passes across Hank’s features, a flash come and gone in an instant. Regret?—sadness, embarrassment, uncertainty? Connor doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but there are tears burning in his vision and he’d rather die than that look be the last thing he sees on Hank’s face, something scraped raw and painful to the touch.

And so he turns around and keeps walking, straight into Hank’s open arms.

Connor is immediately wrapped in a warm embrace, pulled in tight against the solid warmth of Hank’s chest. He wants nothing more than to bury his face there to hide the ugly tears streaming down his face again, but they’re nearly the same height and all he can do is drop his forehead against Hank’s shoulder so silver hair tickles the side of his face.

Cars keep passing to their right, zipping under the shadowed overpass, metallic paint dotted with rainwater. Connor sniffles and Hank holds on to him like he might fly away if he lets go.

“I don’t have anything left to offer anybody but myself, fucked up and shitty as I am,” Connor says, voice muffled against the shoulder of Hank’s coat. “But for some reason I still can’t fathom, that hasn’t managed to chase you off yet.”

“What a lucky coincidence,” Hank says, hand sliding up to the middle of Connor’s back. “Turns out that fucked-up shitty dude is all I was interested in, anyhow.”

Connor coughs out something nearing a laugh and slowly pulls away, scrubbing his face against the flannel sleeve of the green coat. Hank stays close, watching him with those bright blue eyes, and smiles just the tiniest bit.

“I can’t help you with the rig,” Connor says, voice shifting from apologetic into something more cynical. “This may come as a shock considering my former line of work, but I don’t know anything about trucks.”

He doesn’t even realize he’d said _former_ until it slips out, crystallizing in the cold air between them.

“I’ll teach you,” Hank says right away, but his expression doesn’t hide that he’d heard Connor just fine. The whole front of his shirt is stained dark where Connor’s wet clothes were pressed against him but he stands like some impenetrable fortress against the chill, radiating tangible warmth. “We’ll figure something out, put that big brain of yours to use.”

The idea sends a thrill through Connor and scares the shit out of him all at once. He feels lightheaded but grounded, like he’s two stories tall and looking down at his feet planted in bedrock. He doesn’t know the exact definition of what’s between him and Hank or what lies ahead, but he knows he wants to keep going until they either fall off course or find out.

Hank keeps offering an open hand, though, and all he has to do is reach out and take it and not let go again. All he has to do is hold on.

And Hank must be a mind reader because he says, “You’re not gonna make me chase you down some avenue in Manhattan on a moped next time, are you? Because I’m gettin’ a little too old for all that romcom shit.”

“No, and I think the truck was overkill myself,” Connor manages to say, which rustles a snort of Hank. Maybe it’s good enough for now.

They walk back to the rig together in easy silence, the rain only a light sprinkle in the air.

It goes unspoken that there won’t have to be a next time.  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Hank keeps winding up the route deeper into Kentucky until his eyes start crossing on the dotted center line of the highway. He’s starving and exhausted all at once, somehow hungover again even though he swears straight up and down he sobered up back in Tennessee. On top of that his hand feels like it was hammered out with a meat mallet, and it’s been so many hours now he’s probably too far gone past the point of damage control.

Connor is sitting shotgun in a fresh set of dry clothes with his sneakers drying near the dashboard heater vent, still awake but silently gazing out the dark window. He’s got one socked foot tucked underneath him and looks up when Hank clears his throat.

“We gotta pull off somewhere for a couple hours so I can squeeze in a cat nap,” he says. “Maybe eat something fast. You gonna be alright staying here with me and Sumo?”

Connor wouldn’t want to be anywhere else if given the choice, but he doesn’t say that. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “You should get some rest in the back, I can stay up here and keep watch.”

Somehow it hadn’t really occurred to Hank until now that he’s only got one bunk between the two of them and a dog the size of a Shetland pony. He’d much rather hole up in another motel room for the night for comfort’s sake, but it’d be better to sleep for a few hours and then set out again well before dawn to beat morning traffic. He’s been dreading a very caustic courtesy call from Fowler about the ETA of the oil tanker for the past 36 hours at least, but so far his phone’s been silent. The client who contracted them out must have the patience of a saint.

But the faster they move now, the fucking better. And if that means sleeping in shifts on rotation so they can both get some shuteye in the bunk, then so be it. Hank’s only regret is that Connor doesn’t know how to operate a big rig—at least not yet.

But if Kentucky’s good for anything in a pinch, it’s good for empty dirt lots that may as well have _free parking_ written all over them. There’s one kitty-corner to a 7-11 just inside the borders of Clay County and Hank doesn’t see any trespassing notices staked into the ground, so they pull in without another thought and cut the truck lights.

Sumo starts whining and dancing from foot to foot, pressing his big face up against the glass and smearing slobber everywhere as he looks out. Hank grimaces and makes a mental note to get some real glass cleaner instead of keeping his booze in the labeled bottle.

“C’mon, you big doofus,” he says as he unloads the dog, cheerful enough despite how tired he feels. “Maybe Connor will take you for a spin while I go inside.”

Connor perks up right away at that but presses his mouth into a thin line when he looks at his waterlogged sneakers lying on the dash. He goes to reach for them anyway, but Hank calls him off and tells him to find the pair of old Chuck Taylors somewhere in the back.

“You want anything in particular from the hot bar?” Hank asks around a yawn, reaching up to palm the back of his neck. Connor had disappeared from view to start rummaging around for the pair of shoes and his disembodied voice calls up from the sleeper.

“I could probably eat fifty of those chicken taquitos right now,” he says, and a moment later his head pops out to eyeball Hank with a knowing expression. “Get some ice for your hand.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank mumbles, snaking into his coat pocket for the whisky flask before squeezing his hand into a fist and deciding against it. “So taquitos, that’s all?”

“Surprise me,” Connor with a tiny wink. He plops down in the driver’s seat above Hank and Sumo to start lacing up the borrowed Chucks, long legs dangling out the door. The shoes are definitely a size too big but Connor looks plenty grateful for something dry, and Hank’s feeling some kind of way about that wink and Connor wearing his clothes from head to fuckin’ toe.

“Alright,” he says, slapping the side of the truck. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He passes Sumo’s leash up to Connor and they part ways to go about their chosen duties. Hank walks through the dirt lot and onto the asphalt paved around 7-11, past a homeless man sitting on the curb with duct tape wrapped around his shoes and a newspaper cone full of paper flowers on pipe cleaners.

“For your lady friend,” the man says, holding up one of the flowers as Hank reaches for the door.

“Don’t have one,” Hank says with a tight smile, and then disappears inside.

Back at the deli case Hank dumps about twenty taquitos into a takeout box and adds a few churros on top for good measure. Eating on the road wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world by a long shot, but if you could count on anything about franchised America, at least the food pickings were consistent.

He gets a couple sports drinks and some lemon lime sodas to tide them over until tomorrow, the former of which will hopefully get some electrolytes back into their systems after Reed’s impromptu drinking party. Connor had puked up everything in his stomach and Hank, well—Hank’s just getting too fucking old to tear it up like a frat kegger, if he’s being honest with himself. The only reason he’s not dead on his feet right now is from too many years of building up what his wife’s old therapist would’ve called a _functional tolerance_.

“Fuck that guy,” Hank mutters under his breath, letting the drink cooler slam shut behind him. He starts heading back up front when he spots a box of honey buns next to the Twinkies and Ho Hos, and doesn’t even think twice before throwing them on top of his armful of gas station loot. The last order of business resides behind the counter in a glass case, and it’s not a carton of cigarettes Hank’s looking for but a cheap track phone most people use for burners. Connor’s phone has been dead for at least two days and without a charger or any cell service beyond calling 911 it’s not serving much purpose beyond being a glorified paperweight.

Hank dumps everything on the counter and manages to fish out his wallet before he remembers the ice Connor told him to get for his busted hand. He throws an accusatory look back at the ice machine like it’s the one to blame for all this, and then smiles at the bored clerk still holding the track phone’s blister pack behind the counter. “Be right back.”

Outside, the homeless man looks up again when he sees Hank shoulder the gas station door out into the cool night air. He holds up another pipe cleaner flower, this one blue crepe paper delicately folded into the rough shape of a peony.

“For your not-lady friend,” he says, tipping his head toward where Connor and Sumo are busy sniffing around the truck. Hank’s first instinct is to stiffen and keep on walking like he hadn’t heard at all, but in the end he stops and takes the paper carnation from the guy sitting on the gum-pocked concrete.

“Thanks, man,” he says, pulling the few dollars he got in change from his jeans pocket to pass down in exchange for the flower. “Take care.”

Connor’s eyes go straight to the flower while Hank trudges back up through the vacant lot. Sumo’s hot breath is puffing while he waits and Hank only sticks the pipe cleaner in the breast pocket of Connor’s coat as he passes.

“Peony for your thoughts,” he says with a snort, climbing back up into the rig to get Sumo’s bowl and a scoop of dog food. Connor juts his chin down to look at the flower like he’s never seen such a thing, one hand coming up to gently touch the blue crepe paper.  

Hank and Connor sit down on the running board and work through the box of taquitos and churros between them while Sumo chows down on his kibble. It’s cold as hell but the stars are out and the sky is bright with them, black velvet poked through with tiny specks of white-hot embroidery.

Connor bites a churro in half and looks down at Hank’s too-big shoes on his feet. He chews and thumbs some cinnamon sugar away from the corner of his mouth, lost elsewhere in thought. Hank watches his eyes glaze over for several long moments before they brighten back up, like Connor had bobbed back to the surface of wherever he’d been submerged.

“Did you get any ice?” he asks, looking up at Hank. The bandage taped on his eyebrow is peeling up along the edge and Hank has to fight the urge to reach out and fix it.

“Yeah, I got some ice,” Hank mutters, looking down at his right hand, already bruising a nasty puce color. When he glances up Connor is looking at it, too. “Probably won’t do me any good at this point.”

“I’ll help you wrap it before you go to sleep,” Connor says, getting a hint of that far-off look on his face again. “It’s the least I can do after…uh, well. You know.”

Hank nods at that, deciding there’s no reason to shrug off a helping hand. If he wants Connor to play the same card when it comes to how things are working out between them he’s going to have to uphold his deck rules, too. That sparks a thought in his head, and in the moment it seems so ludicrous and Hank’s so exhausted that he tips his head back and laughs.

“What?” Connor asks, surprised although the bruised bow of his mouth is already pulling up on one side. Even hungover and beat all to hell he looks like an overeager Labrador.

“Is this weird?” Hank asks, gesturing in the space between them. “Two dudes and a dog road tripping up to Detroit in a fuckin’ oil tanker. One’s a part-time drunk and the other’s a reformed escort.”

“I’ve seen stranger things,” Connor says, and Hank doesn’t doubt that. “Why would it be weird?”

Hank pulls a face. “We don’t know jack shit about each other, really,” he says, looking up at the night sky. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“Stern,” Connor says without pause, and then part of him seems to regret it. “Well, that—that’s Amanda’s surname.”

“Who’s Amanda?” Hank asks after a beat.

“My adoptive mother,” Connor says, and immediately draws his legs up to hug his knees. It makes him look young, almost painfully so considering he’s 31, and Hank instantly decides that he doesn’t like it.

“What about your parents?” he asks instead of pulling out any more loose threads about this so-called Amanda. “I’d say that’s your real last name, anyhow.”

Connor runs his knuckles along the edge of his jaw and bows his head some. “Yeah, I should probably change it back when I get a chance,” he says, though he doesn’t mention his given surname at all. “I’ve put it off for too long, but it’s hard to get your legal affairs in order when you’re a transient hooker.”

“Either that or get married,” Hank rattles off the cuff, and Connor’s eyes snap up quick as a flash.

Hank wonders if he said something wrong. “Is that out of the question?”

“No,” Connor says, looking away again toward the backlit 7-11 sign in the next lot over. The light eclipses behind his head just-so, and from where Hank’s sitting it looks like he has a neon halo. “I was engaged, actually. Not too long ago if you can believe it.”

Hank inhales sharp enough that he chokes on air. “ _What?_ ” he sputters, trying to pass it off as a cough.

“As you can see, it didn’t turn out the way I’d planned,” Connor says with a soft snort, waving a hand over his himself. “But yeah—I would’ve been a Connor Manfred if things hadn’t gone off the deep end.”

“ _Man-fred_ ,” Hank says, trying on the word for size before making a sour face. “Doesn’t fit. You were engaged to another dude?”

“Yep,” Connor sighs, finally unfurling his legs so the rubber heels of Hank’s Chucks thump against the side of the rig. “His name was Markus.”

Sumo has long since finished eating and has been patiently waiting for any spoils from the 7-11 box. He lets out a gentle _boof_ and Connor breaks off a piece of churro for him, tossing it up in the air. “We should go take care of your hand,” he says, reaching behind his head to get a grip on the rig’s handlebar.

Hank opens his mouth and snaps it shut again. Connor disappears inside the truck with Sumo hot on his heels, and Hank scrambles up to follow them, toting the other plastic bags in and nearly slipping off the bottom step in the process.

“Now hold on a second,” he says as he hauls himself back inside and dumps the loot off in the floorboard. “You can’t just drop a bomb on me like that and not tell me what happened. I think we need to play another fire round of truth or fuckin’ truth.”

“Ice first,” Connor says from the rear of the sleeper as he twists the reading lamp on. “Truths second.”

Hank growls but gets the cup of ice and locks the truck up before passing the Styrofoam cup back. He pulls all the shades on the windows and the front one across the windshield and then stoops his head down to peer into the bunk room where he’s got Connor and Sumo both waiting on him. “Uh…are we having a powwow or something?”

Connor slants Hank an expert eye roll but rattles the ice in the cup. “You were the one who wanted to hear sleepover stories—now come sit over here in the light so I can see what I’m doing.”

“Hold your damn horses, Nurse Connor,” Hank says, squeezing into the narrow space before easing himself down onto the edge of his own bunk. Connor’s already rummaged around in the pharmacy bags full of first aid supplies Hank bought for him a couple nights ago and laid a few things out on the sheets. Mostly just an ACE bandage, a single sock, and a plastic Ziploc baggie, but Hank supposes he knows what he’s doing.

Connor doesn’t start talking again until he’s got Hank’s palm balanced on his knee. “Markus and I met in college,” he says, dumping ice into the plastic bag before sealing it shut. “He was charismatic, artistic, beautiful—poly-sci major, you know the type. A man for the people.”

“Hmph,” Hank grumbles, watching Connor stuff the bag of ice into one of his long socks. “I’m not even a man for myself half the time.”

“Me either, which is probably why I was so initially drawn to him,” Connor says, folding the sock over before reaching for the bandage. Hank’s fingers are still on his knee and the heater’s not running in the truck but he feels a drop of sweat gathering between his shoulder blades regardless.

“Anyway, we met at a university seminar one night, just some random one-off thing for mingling with professionals and rising entrepreneurs,” Connor says, placing the makeshift ice pack across Hank’s knuckles before starting to methodically wrap the bandage around his palm. “I remember there was a 16-year-old kid there who’d already graduated and founded his own fucking business, something to do with tech, and I sat there and listened to his keynote speech and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life at 21. When I looked up Markus caught my eye from across the room and I guess the rest is history.”

Hank keeps trying and failing to imagine what this Markus might look like. “How long did you date before you got engaged?” he asks, and then blows out a bleary sigh. “Bet it wasn’t a shotgun wedding like mine.”

Connor is busy tying off the bandage near Hank’s thumb but blinks, his face gone strangely still while he processes that. Hank’s mouth goes dry when he realizes what he just exposed about himself, but he can’t quite manage to say anything else. He only stares at the dark scabs and greening bruises on Connor’s face and prays he doesn’t have to talk about all that just yet.

“We dated…all throughout junior and senior year,” Connor says carefully, but Hank knows he’s filed that slip-up away for later. It occurs to him with a jolt in his gut that Connor finished wrapping his hand a full minute ago and Hank’s just casually left it on his knee this whole goddamn time. He draws it away in a hurry and pretends to inspect every angle of the ACE bandage, stiffly waggling all five fingers.

“It was a long engagement,” Connor says, reaching into the half-empty cup of ice to pull a piece out to pop into his mouth. “Things kept getting put off for—personal reasons. Markus was always getting involved in new projects or causes with his humanitarian work. I had a hard time keeping up with him most of the time, even though I tried to travel with him when I could get away from work.”

Hank is listening but can’t stop himself when he yawns hard enough that something in his neck pops. One look at the dashboard clock tells him it’s ten past midnight. Connor only gets up from the bunk and takes the cup of ice with him to the front.

“I think that’s enough truths for now,” he says, plopping down into the passenger seat. “I’m putting in my formal IOU request for yours at a later date.”

“M’sorry, kid,” Hank says, slumping over to start pulling at the laces on his boots. “I’m dead-dog tired.”

“I know,” is all Connor says, a touch softer than usual. “What time should I wake you up?”

Hank turns off the reading lamp and only manages to shrug out of his jacket before all but collapsing in bed. He’d usually need a strong bump off his flask to send him to sleep but that won’t be necessary tonight. “Four-thirty, maybe five at the latest,” he says, head thudding into the pillow. “Go ahead and get that new phone set up, if you want. The one in the bag. Put my number in it.”

The last thing Hank hears before drifting off is the little startup tone on the cheap flip phone as Connor opens the screen and illuminates his face with the cool blue LED light.  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


It’s warm and breezy out, just a touch of budding apple blossom in the air. Springtime, probably, and nowhere near mid-autumn in the foothills of Kentucky. Hank opens his eyes and immediately knows he’s dreaming for two reasons: he’s somewhere in the orchard his grandfather sold off to land developers in the summer of 1997, and Cole’s standing beside him, whole and unbroken.

“Son?” he says anyway, unable to resist the promise of a conversation even if it’s happening inside his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Just came to visit you,” Cole says, peering up at Hank with one eye squinted shut and the gap between his two front teeth shining. “This place is pretty nice, huh?”

Hank reaches out to touch Cole’s shoulder and nearly buckles with relief when his hand doesn’t pass through. “I wish you could’ve seen if for yourself,” he says, almost guiltily, looking around at the sprawling apple trees as they once stood. “When I was your age I’d come out here for hours and play until it was nearly dark.”

But the Cole in this dream doesn’t seem to know the orchard was torn out of the ground twenty years ago. “I come here all the time,” he says, reaching up to take Hank’s last three fingers in his small hand so they can walk along together. “Sometimes I explore with another little kid with blond hair, but he’s not here right now.”

“That’s nice, bud,” Hank says, walking along wherever Cole wants to lead him. He may be in his own head but he can’t find the heart to argue something unimportant with a figment of his former son. He’s just glad to have these few fleeting moments of—whatever this is. Neurons firing false images into his brain using nothing but recycled memories from years of his life he won’t ever get back. None of it’s real. He wishes it was.

Because this is a dream, the further they walk into the orchard the more mature the apples seem to be. Hank looks at the tiny little walnut-sized fruits clinging to tree branches, hard and perfect for putting in a homemade slingshot. Beyond that they grow pinker and rounder with each step until the trees are sagging with unpicked fruit. They’ll go mealy and bad with worms if the orchard crew doesn’t come out here soon with their ladders and barrels, and then Hank laughs because there’s no reason to pick the apples in his head.

Cole talks like he never left the world. He asks Hank about Sumo’s next vet checkup, if they can get ice cream at that new parlor in town, if Hank’s made his Christmas list out for the year. Hank says yes to everything because he can’t bear doing anything else, and it’s worth it to see Cole’s bright smile again.

When the apples start falling but are still good enough to eat, they stumble upon another person in the orchard. He’s sitting under one of the shadier trees, back against the trunk, idly flipping the pages of a tattered paperback book. Hank has to look hard and then look again before he realizes it’s Connor, almost unrecognizable without his battered face. That alone makes his heart pound in his chest.

_It’s just a dream,_ he reminds himself. _Just a dream, just a fucking dream._

“Do you know that man?” he asks Cole, curious to see what the answer may be.

“Yeah, he’s nice,” Cole says with a little shrug. “He showed up the other day and said he was lost, but then he sat down and didn’t leave again.”

Hank feels his expression darken some. He wonders what would happen if they walked up to Connor, if he asked the other man why he was sitting under an apple tree that only exists in Hank’s head. Why does this constructed image of his son know Connor and what the hell has he been reading the whole time he’s been here?

Still holding Cole’s hand, Hank walks up to the tree Connor’s reclining under and stops when Connor looks up, eyes bright and glad like he’d been expectantly waiting. He’s barefoot out here, not wearing anybody’s borrowed shoes or his own sodden sneakers.

“Hank,” he says, closing his book around a finger to mark the page. “Wake up.”

“What?” Hank asks, blinking in the memory of spring sunlight so real he can almost feel the warmth on his face. “What are you…?”

“There’s somebody outside,” Connor says more urgently, moving around so he can stand beneath the tree. Hank can’t really do anything but stare at his face when they’re this close, pale and unblemished except for a few moles peppered on his skin. “I think it’s a cop.”

“…a cop?” Hank sputters, jerking fully awake to the sight of darkness. Cole and the orchard are gone and Sumo is growling next to him, low and deep in his chest. When Hank’s eyes adjust he sees Connor peering down at him from above, an errant curl of hair flopping against his forehead.

“They’ve knocked on the window twice and keep trying to see inside with a flashlight,” Connor says in a low voice, bracing his fingers on the edge of the bed by Hank’s hip. “Said they’re with Clay County Sheriff’s Department, but I wanted you to be the one to greet them.”

“Good call,” Hank says, then immediately sits up to get his gun from where he’d left it in the tiny closet drawer. He tucks it in the waistband of his jeans and steps into his boots, only doing the laces up slapdash before maneuvering around to the front. He pulls the window shade back and sure enough, there’s an officer in uniform relaying something back to the station on her two-way radio.

Hank sets his gun back down behind the center console to avoid any misunderstanding and then goes out to greet her with a smile.

She looks up when she sees the truck door open and takes a step back, hand going to rest on her duty belt while she holds the flashlight up to shine directly into Hank’s face. “Evening, sir,” she says in a thick drawl. “Are you the proprietor of this vehicle?”

Hank narrows his eyes against the beam of light spearing into his retinas and nods, boots thunking against metal as he slowly moves down the steps to be on ground level with the officer. “Yes ma’am, I’ve got all my papers,” he says, hoping some of that put-on southern charm will help them scrape out of whatever issue has cropped up. “Is there a problem?”

The flashlight moves from Hank’s face to his bandaged hand and then shines right back up into the rig’s window, highlighting Connor’s battered mug peering out. Hank knows what she’s looking at before she even says anything and feels himself deflate on the spot. _Fuck_.

“We received a call that there was an unauthorized truck trespassing on the lot,” she says, keeping her light trained on Connor as she motions for him to come out. The door creaks open and Connor steps out in nothing but his jacket and jeans, still laced up into Hank’s sneakers.

“Anything funny going on in there?” the officer asks while Connor’s making his way down. The question is directed at Hank, evidenced by her flashlight beam swiveling around to shine on him like a spotlight.

“No, officer, we were just sleeping,” he says, catching Connor’s presence move into his peripherals on the left. “Needed a few hours of shuteye before heading back out on the road.”

The woman’s face is a blank slate hard enough to grind steel. “Uh-huh,” she says, then turns back over to Connor. “Evening, sir. Do you mind stepping over here and speaking with me in private?”

Connor blinks but nods. “That’s fine,” he says in that too-polite voice he uses sometimes. “Is there something wrong?”

“Just wanna chat real quick,” she says, then gestures for Hank to stay put by the rig. “Stay right here for a minute, sir, if you’d be so kind. Where I can see you.”

Hank props himself against the front of the truck in plain view and watches Connor walk over to the cop’s squad car where it’s parked a few yards out of earshot. She keeps her light shining on the ground in a pool around their feet and talks to Connor in low tones. When she gestures up around her jaw with a gloved hand and then points at one of the nastier contusions on Connor’s nose Hank feels his gut clench.

But Connor shakes his head, saying something back that Hank wishes he could hear. He strains to comprehend their voices but it’s all snatches of gibberish from this distance. Sumo barks from inside the rig, face smooshed up against the glass, and Hank shushes him with a look.

After another minute of conversation the officer finishes her impromptu interrogation and walks Connor back over, mumbling something into her radio along the way. She asks to see Hank’s registration papers as a formality and matches everything up with his license and the plates.

“You’re free to go, so long as you don’t stay here,” she says, finally clicking her Maglite off. “Trespassing sign wasn’t posted where it should’ve been so we’ll let it slide this time. But for future reference, you fellas probably ought to steer clear of old lots like this—some folks won’t call the police, they’ll just wake you up with a shotgun barrel tapping on the glass and let the situation escalate from there.”

She sighs and slants a knowing look between them. “Be safe out there, and good luck with everything.”

Hank and Connor bid the officer farewell and get back into the rig to crank over the engine and get the heater running. She slides into her car but waits for them to head out, and Hank had only gotten about two and a half hours of sleep judging by the clock’s 3:27 AM display, but he pulls up the parking break and steers back on the road anyhow.

They haven’t even cleared past the 7-11 when he says, “What the hell was she asking you about your face?”

“Well, first she very delicately implied I was a prostitute,” Connor says sullenly, though there’s something in his voice trying not to laugh. “Which, I mean—she wasn’t _wrong_ , but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring up anything about our Pretty Woman narrative.”

Hank swears under his breath and thanks whoever’s listening that it’s dark in the cab so Connor can’t see him flush crimson. “Jesus Christ.”

“Then when I told her we were dating she asked if you were beating me and offered to give me a ride back to the station if I needed an out,” Connor says matter-of-factly while Hank makes a choked sound in his throat. “I just said I have a relapsing drinking problem and got into some shit at a bar a few nights ago while you were in the bathroom.”

“You told her we were dating?!” Hank says. He can’t even wrap his mind around the rest—all his and Connor’s problems twisted up into one fuckup of a never-ending disaster.

“Would you rather me try and explain the even _more_ unbelievable alternative?” Connor asks with a snort. “Or just let her go ahead and think you’d hired a lot lizard to warm up your bed for the night?”

“No, God—no,” Hank says while he drives, rumbling through an intersection just as the light turns yellow. “What you said was fine, I just…I mean, Jesus, have you ever even dated anybody my age before? I look like such a dirty old man I’m surprised she bought it.”

Connor is uncharacteristically quiet for a drawn-out moment. “No, I haven’t,” he says. “But I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

The silence that follows goes on for too long and Hank has to clear his throat just to hear something other than nothing. “Well, that’s great,” he says, tapping the steering wheel and feeling like an utter tool. “Better to keep your options open n’ all, because you never know who’s going to come along down the road.”

He can’t stop thinking about Connor sitting under the apple tree in his head. Clear face, bright and familiar for reasons Hank doesn’t quite know. Bare feet on the spring grass with a finger holding his place in that old book. It feels like a haunting he wants to go back to.

“No,” Connor agrees belatedly, turning to gaze out the dark window at something Hank can’t see. “Guess you never really know.”  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a lil' embrace, you know. One of them special huggies to tide you over. We're getting into it now! 
> 
> I know the Markus tidbit may come as a surprise to some people but spoiler alert, it's primarily just a plot device to carry more about Connor's backstory (which we'll learn later). It ain't that deep and Markus is perfectly busy down in Florida in this AU (probably having hot orgies with Josh, Simon, & North amirite), so never fear!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a brief scene relaying a fatal secondhand car accident Hank and Connor pass on the highway. No dead bodies are described in explicit detail but they are definitely mentioned. More potty mouth language in excess, but if you've made it this far you were probably expecting as much lol.

  
Fowler’s call comes in just as the first crag of daybreak opens on the horizon, ringing like one of those old-fashioned telephones deep in Hank’s pocket. They’re sitting in a half-empty parking lot at a rest stop somewhere off I-75 headed northbound out of Kentucky and it’s so fucking cold there’s an inch of frost on the ground. Connor is brushing his teeth with nothing but a glob of paste and a bottle of water and looks up with his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, standing there in the foggy morning light while the phone rings away.

Hank frowns at the screen and draws in a deep breath before bringing his cell up to one ear. “Morning, Jeff,” he says, bracing for immediate impact. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You got some real brass, trying me this early in the fucking morning when you’re nearly twenty-four hours past due with that tanker,” Fowler starts on the other end of the line. “Even Reed has the decency to call ahead when he’s dumbfuck wasted somewhere in Wyoming and can’t make it back with a load on schedule.”

Hank sighs and pushes his hair back, wondering what the hell kind of lukewarm excuse he can fumble out that won’t send Fowler up in flames.  “Listen, I know I’ve already kinda screwed the pooch on this one, Jeff, but some unexpected shit came up—”

“I’d say some shit came up!” Fowler shouts before he can finish. “I got one E. Kamski calling up here at the asscrack of dawn two days running, sounds like some kind of stoned sex therapist on the fucking phone, asking me if I’d be _so kind_ as to update him on the arrival of his 9,000 gallons of crude oil. Now the only question I have left for you is where in the name of bumfuck creation you are with that goddamn tanker?”

Hank grimaces and watches as Connor rinses with a mouthful of water and spits onto the frozen grass. “Well,” he says. “We’re still in Kentucky.”

“We?” Fowler echoes. “You and that dog, _we?_ ”

“Uh, no,” Hank says, turning his back on Connor to face the highway. “Me and a passenger I picked up along the way. Citizen in distress, I guess you could say.”

Fowler is silent on the other end of the line for a long beat. “You picked up a hitchhiker?” he asks at last, gone strangely composed, but Hank knows it’s only a brief calm spell in the central eye of the storm. “You mean to tell me you picked up a hitchhiker on a job— _the_ very fucking hitchhiker that’s made you 24 hours late with this haul—and they’re still riding in the rig, Hank? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yep,” Hank says, briefly turning to glance at Connor over his shoulder. He gives a thumbs-up signal with his good hand and goes back to the call. “I’m looking at him right now.”

Fowler sucks in enough wind that he nearly whistles on the other end of the phone. “A citizen— _a citizen in distress?_ Who the fuck are you, Batman? No, you know what?—I don’t even want to know. I don’t want to know a goddamn thing about it. I just want you to get that tanker into Detroit by tonight barring an army of angels raining fire down on your fucking head, do you understand me? Or so help me, Hank, I’ll fly down there and get it myself.”

“Understood,” Hank says, and then heaves out another sigh. “I’m sorry, Jeff, I just—”

“Save it,” Fowler snaps. “I didn’t call to talk about your personal life, I called to talk about maintaining the good reputation of my business. Now start driving, I’m hanging up this goddamn phone.”

“Got it,” Hank says, and then the call cuts out. He stares at his phone screen until it goes dark and then looks up to find Connor peering at himself in the truck’s side view mirror, trying to wet down and comb his hair into submission. Hank can tell it’s been a while since Connor last had a haircut because his sideburns are starting to grow out and twist into little curls by his ears.

Connor wets his comb again and tries to get his waves to lay down flat despite the insistent cowlick in the back. “That didn’t sound good,” he says, still watching his reflection in the mirror.

“It wasn’t,” Hank says, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “We need to be back in Detroit by tonight.”

“What?” Connor squawks. “You’ve barely slept at all in the past 24 hours and you’ve driven half the night already!”

“Yeah, well,” Hank says, trying to crack a smile even though his bones feel like lead in his body. “No rest for the wicked, huh? It’s not that bad.”

Connor gives up on his hair and drops down from the step on the side of the truck, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip as he looks at the rig and then back at Hank. “Do you think I could figure out how to drive this thing in the next ten minutes?”

Hank laughs at that as something warm blooms across his chest. “No, but you’re sweet for offering,” he teases, except the _sweet_ part kind of slipped out before he could stop it.

There’s just enough of Connor’s unblemished complexion mingling with his bruises to see a touch of pink shining through on his cheeks. “Well—anything I could try to do to help, y’know,” he mutters, lashes lowering as he looks out across the parking lot. “Obviously there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.”

“I’ll teach you when we get back to Detroit,” Hank says immediately, convinced before he’s even really thought it through. “I mean, if you still want to, of course,” he says, mildly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to assume—”

“I’d love that,” Connor says, unable to hide the genuine smile spreading across his face.

“Then it’s a done deal,” Hank says, and wonders if they should shake on it. All he can picture is taking Connor’s hand and pulling him back against his body again, this time without the rain and the overpass, and then decides against it. Sleep deprivation is one hell of a drug.

But Connor takes the promise in stride, full of energy despite the early hour and chatting pleasantly as they pull back out onto 75 to resume the journey north. Hank’s charmed and glad for the distraction to keep him from dozing off, and also a little awestruck by Connor’s enthusiasm after two solid days of his dozing and sullen silences. If anything it’s a sign he’s feeling more himself, and Hank thinks back to the man under the apple tree time and again until he starts wondering if he even dreamed it at all.

“So, I have a proposition,” Connor says sometime later, adopting a more serious tone of voice while his eyes swivel to land on the side of Hank’s face. “About how I could _hypothetically_ repay some of the things you’ve done for me in addition to trading my marketable skills for driving lessons—hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Hypothetically, huh?” Hank says, peering at Connor from the corner of his eye. He knows it’s meant to be an olive branch to keep them from devolving into another argument about the subject, and so he takes the bait without much standoff. “What’s this proposal of yours entail?”

Connor steeples his fingers and taps them against his chin to collect his thoughts for a moment. “I’ve gathered enough about long-haul trucking to know that a lot of guys have co-drivers with them. Takes some of the strain off the job, everybody sleeps in shifts to cover more ground—it’s not a bad gig.”

Hank stiffens up while his stomach goes into short-lived freefall. “You’d want to be my co-driver?!”

“Well, not right way,” Connor says quickly, gone a trace nervous. “There’s obviously a transition period between getting your license and actually driving, and I’m sure I’d have to log a bunch of training hours before I could be any real help. But in the meantime I could keep your logs and manage some of your digital work correspondence, even—anything to help make the job easier.”

Hank is still halfway reeling from the mere idea of Connor wanting to stick around, much less be his fucking co-driver. “I don’t even know what to say,” he blurts out, and then has to reel back around when Connor’s face falls. “I mean—you’re dead serious? Like legitimately convinced this is something you’d want to do with… _me?_ ”

Connor stares at his hands in his lap and wets his bottom lip before he nods. “I don’t see why not, if you’d be open to it,” he says. “I mean, it’d take some work, and I don’t want to overstep where I’m not welcome, but I—I think I’d really like it.”  

The next part comes out barely more than a whisper, but Hank catches it all the same.

“I like being with you and Sumo, anyways,” Connor says, and then looks out the window to make a vaguely pained face at his own expense. “Sorry if I’m saying too much.”

“No, you’re not,” Hank says, trying to blindly reassure him despite the wild ricochet of his own thoughts and emotions. “I just—it’s a lot to think about, you know? But I’d be more than willing to help however I can if you’re firm on this. We’d have to clear things with Fowler and figure the paperwork out, but that’s a fuckin’ cake walk compared to dealing with my bullshit long-term.”

Connor looks back over at that, mouth already open and ready to counterpoint. “What bullshit of yours have I had to deal with?” he asks. “From the very first second of the minute we met, you’ve been the one cleaning up after me. By all means, you should be telling me to fuck off on that principle alone.”  

Hank fills his cheeks with air before blowing everything out between pursed lips, getting a tighter grip around the steering wheel as they move another mile closer to Ohio. “Connor,” he says. “I want to help you, and I’m going to, but you’ve got to understand there’s—there’s a lot of personal shit I don’t broadcast that isn’t exactly anything resembling a personal highlight reel.”

He expects Connor to try and argue that point, too, but the kid only lets out a laugh. “Are you talking about the drinking?” he says. “Because that’s a small strike compared to the number of complaints you could file in my book.”

“No,” Hank says, and then changes his mind. “Shit, I mean _yes_ , but the drinking’s only part of it. And to think I haven’t even had the urge or the wherewithal half the time since you’ve been here—you haven’t even seen shit when it gets bad.”

That statement takes some time to sink in, settling there in the warm cab of the truck. Connor’s hands are busy again while he thinks, absently stroking the soft fur on Sumo’s forehead now that the dog’s stuck his head up onto the center console and let out a heavy sigh.

“You haven’t wanted to drink around me?” he asks. “Or you just didn’t feel like you _needed_ to.”

Hank feels like he’s going to crawl out of his own skin and perish, is what he feels like, but there’s nowhere to run or hide in this truck barreling down the highway.

“Oh, there’s been plenty enough occasions for me to drink myself into a stupor,” he says, hoping it doesn’t sound cruel in all its truthfulness. “And when we were with Reed I almost did, but I stopped—and then I…just haven’t been…reaching for it as much?” He’s rambling and it’s making all this so much worse. “Christ, Connor, fuck if I know.”

Hank thinks about the number times he’s reached for his flask and stopped himself. He thinks even harder about how Connor’s shaken up his self-destruction routine just enough to make him consider putting the bottle down for the first time in nearly five years. It hasn’t been foolproof, of course, but there’d been a marked difference.

“That sounds like a positive thing to me,” is all Connor says, still rubbing around Sumo’s ears.

Irritation bubbles up from some unseen source in Hank and he has to bite down on it, clamping frustration between his teeth like a battlefield medic’s belt. “It won’t last,” he says, trying to convince himself of his own imminent failure. “And there’s a lot you don’t know about that I’m not prepared to let loose in a round of truth or truth.”

Connor’s eyes narrow some but he only sniffs and goes back to petting the dog. “Guess that makes two of us,” he says.

“I guess so,” Hank tells him, immediately feeling petty for needing the last word. But there’s too much to tell and he’s too tired to talk anymore when they’ve got to cross three states in the next five hours, so he does the next best thing he can think of beyond cranking the radio up into oblivion and reaches for his phone instead.

“Here,” he says, passing it over to Connor. “You said you wanted to help with the business-end of things, right? Feel free to start flipping through those messages and emails and clearing some shit out if you want. Anything noteworthy we can mark down in the back of the log book.”

Connor takes the phone but immediately cops the edge of an attitude Hank wasn’t expecting. “Are you asking me or are you telling me?”

“Jesus, kid,” Hank says, slumping some in his seat. “I’m offering, is all, since you were the one acting interested.”

Connor thumbs on the display and gazes at the lock screen. “What’s your password?”

“10-11,” Hank murmurs, waiting while Connor types in the numbers. When it works, Connor frowns at the number of new notifications but doesn’t say anything to complain, only leans over into the console and fishes out the log book and an ink pen with the cap gone missing.

“What qualifies as noteworthy?” he asks, already opening up the voicemail app and bringing the speaker up to his ear.

“Life and death, independent contracting jobs paying more than five grand,” Hank says. He’s trying to remember if there’s anything in there he doesn’t want Connor to hear, then decides he doesn’t really give a fuck anymore anyway. Calls from Fowler and local real estate scammers back in Michigan were hardly personal. “If my ex shows up in there somewhere, feel free to tell her I’m dead.”

Connor’s mouth twitches up into a smile. “Good day, madam,” he says in an eerily robotic voice, miming conversation into the receiver. “Speaking on behalf of Mr. H. Anderson’s entire will and estate, I’m here to kindly tell you and your limp-dick therapist to fuck off with the most sincere regards. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Hank says, and raises an invisible glass to the air.    
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Kentucky keeps on rolling by, stretching out on either side of the highway in sprawling pastures partitioned out with miles upon miles of white livestock fencing. Horse barns built to look like steepled churches cluster along the browning hillsides and the horses themselves stand out in blankets gathered together in small herds, long tails idly swishing in the cold wind. There aren’t any new foals to be seen this time of year but the mares with low-hanging bellies promise new babies come the first few months of spring. Fuzzy yearlings chase each other through the winding paddocks, already in competition to see who might be the next big horse on the track.

Less than two hours in, traffic slows to a dead-ass stop on the interstate. From their vantage point sitting up high in the rig, Hank can see far enough ahead over the tops of what seems like a full mile of passenger cars to make out the flashing blue and red lights of a whole slew of emergency personnel scattered across the road and in the median. There’s a bobtailing rig not too far from the roadblock, and for the first time in weeks Hank finds an excuse to fire up the old CB radio set on top of his dash and flip it over to Channel 19.

“Anybody up past the 432 yardstick on I-75 northbound out of Kentucky?” he says into the mouthpiece as Connor looks up to listen. “I got eyes up the boulevard on a bunch of meat wagons, doesn’t look pretty.”

Static snaps and pops in over the waves for a few seconds and then a crackled but clear voice comes back in. “10-4, I’m right here on it. Two white sheets on the ground and a couple four-doors and a bottle rocket greasy side up. We’re gonna be sitting pretty for a while.”

“Thanks brother, over and out,” Hank says, and then flips the CB off and hangs up the receiver. “Shitfuck.”

Connor deletes another junk email out of Hank’s inbox and keeps scrolling. “Two white sheets?”

“Two dead bodies,” Hank says, shifting the truck into park and taking his foot off the break. He reaches up and palms over his face and beard, scratching through the whiskers in desperate need of a trim. “Whenever there’s a motorcycle involved they’ll usually be spreading out kitty litter and hosing the mess off later.”

Connor makes a face but Hank only tips his seat back a few inches and closes his eyes. “Wake me up when traffic starts moving again,” he says, so damn tired that even reclining in the seat for a few minutes feels like lying in a cloud. “A few minutes will do me some good.”

“Should I take Sumo out?” Connor asks, peering through the windshield at the grassy median across another lane of stopped traffic. “Just for a pee break.”

“Can if you want,” Hank says, cracking one eye open when Sumo’s tail starts thumping the back of his seat like a whip. “Be careful.”

Connor and Sumo lumber down out of the truck, a sure sight to behold judging by the number of stares they draw from other drivers and passengers nearby. They weave through the parked cars and Sumo immediately lifts his leg when they get on the grass, looking all the more pleased with himself when he pisses about a gallon and then some to boot.

They sniff around for a couple minutes, not finding much of anything interesting beyond a few blown-out tires and a rusty section of bedspring in the median. The wind is biting cold on Connor’s sore face, though, and he’s relieved when they climb back up into the warmth of the rig to find Hank already snoring away.

“Shh, Sumo,” he whispers, guiding the dog into the back toward his bed. “Go lay down.”

The highway blockade still hasn’t budged an inch and when the sound of a helicopter sounds from overhead, Connor knows there’s not much to do but find some time to kill while Hank saws logs and the accident gets cleared. He goes through another throng of voicemails dating back four months and deletes them all, then starts getting bored with the number of Viagra and _horny wet pussy looking for local big cock_ spam emails he has to wade through in Hank’s inbox by the dozens.

Well, maybe _bored_ isn’t the right word. But if his imagination keeps wandering too far he’s going to pop a boner in the cab of this truck like a touch-starved teenager on a hair trigger and now’s not the time or the place, though Connor would be lying to himself if he said some part of him wished it wasn’t.

Not for the first time, he replays the memory of being drawn into Hank’s arms from the night before. It already feels like a lifetime ago, like it happened somewhere inside the fringes of a hallucination instead of waking life. Hank had been so warm, and Connor had been so cold and soaked clear down to the bone. All he’d wanted in that moment was to climb inside Hank’s coat with him and never come back out again. It leads to other thoughts, less virtuous ones, and Connor shakes his head as if to send them scuttling away. He’s no virtuous man, but Hank deserves better.

He takes some deep breaths and glances over at the man in question, still sleeping with his mouth hanging open just the barest bit now. Knocked out like a light, and Connor figures he’ll never know the difference if he just so happens to take a little saunter around the corners of Hank’s phone not having to do with work. He’d trusted him with his password, after all, and any man in his right mind with something to hide would’ve never handed it over that easily.

Connor scrolls through the camera roll for a few minutes, not finding much more beyond the odd picture of Sumo or some mechanic’s part meant to go under the hood of a rig. There’s one or two pictures of a horizon taken in a place he doesn’t recognize, but judging by the water in the distance it must be somewhere along the upper east coast or maybe near the Great Lakes. There’s grey rocks scattered along the beach, worn down satin-smooth by time and the rolling water. Connor guesses Maine or New Hampshire and doesn’t find anything more interesting than that, disappointed in his own snooping until he remembers the data backup linked to Hank’s email account.

He strikes gold almost right away.

There are a few divorce court legal write-ups, probably papers prepared by Hank’s attorney all done up in mind-numbing jargon. A single PDF of a court-ordered mediation session between the likes of Mr. Hank W. Anderson and Mrs. Jennifer Goodwin Anderson dated back to February of 2013. Connor skims the document and sees that the reason for mediation was boiled down to _irreconcilable differences exacerbated by familial grief_ , and below that there’s the looping signature of a licensed psychotherapist named Jonathan D. Walker.

Connor immediately knows without asking that Jonathan is the therapist Hank’s wife had run off with. He wonders if they were fucking before or after the mediation, and whether Hank had to sit through that humiliation and look it in the eye or not.

Leaving the documents behind, Connor goes to the images folder and opens it up without much thought. He doesn’t really know what he was expecting to find—maybe some subpar nudes, more Sumo, and possibly grainy scanned photographs of Hank’s childhood some far-off relative sent him in an email once upon a time.

He doesn’t find evidence of Hank’s childhood, but he finds photos of somebody else’s.

The little boy in the pictures is dark-headed but has an unmistakable gap between his two front teeth when he smiles for the camera before the first day of second grade. Connor feels his heart drop into the pit of his stomach when he scrolls and scrolls—through photos of a T-ball game, through a first Halloween dressed as a tiny dinosaur, through a younger Sumo stretched out on the hardwood floor and a preschooler sleeping on his shaggy side.

His breath tightens in his chest when he swipes over to a photo of Hank—and it’s Hank, somehow, younger and blond but with a touch of telltale grey starting at his temples—holding a new baby in his arms, swaddled up tight in a periwinkle blanket.

_Bet it wasn’t a shotgun wedding like mine_ , Connor hears in an echo from the night before.

A horn blares from somewhere behind them and Connor nearly drops the phone, scrambling to mash the back button like his life depends on it while Hank snorts awake in the driver’s seat. Traffic is starting to slowly move in the far right lane and people are merging over one by one, or at least trying to if Hank’s rig wasn’t still blocking them out.

“Shit,” Hank says, scrambling to reach for his keys in the ignition with his bandaged hand. The engine makes a strained sound and misfires once with a cough before finally turning over, but Hank seems too groggy to notice or care. “Thought you were gonna wake me up when we started moving again.”

Connor’s heart beats high and fast in his throat. Hank’s locked phone is wedged somewhere between his knees, for all intents and purposes feeling like a live bomb. “Sorry,” he mumbles, looking at the side mirror as they gradually get over into the lone lane creeping ahead. “I looked down for a second and must’ve closed my eyes.”

Not exactly a lie, but not even close to the truth.

“Don’t blame you,” Hank says, squinting at his mirrors as they pull ahead. The lines in his face look ever deeper than before his nap. “When we get back to Detroit I’m sleeping for a whole goddamn week.”

That doesn’t sound too bad to Connor, either, if it weren’t for the fact he doesn’t have a pot to piss in back in Michigan, much less a place to sleep. He wonders what Amanda would do if he rang the doorbell at her big stone house after not speaking to her for two years and asked to crash on the couch for a few nights.

She would let him in, stoic and regal as ever in her pressed linen clothes, but it wouldn’t be an act done graciously.

Traffic crawls by the accident remnants on its hands and knees, every driver within eye or earshot rubbernecking around to get a look at the sheets still covering two vaguely human-shaped lumps on the ground. There’s a Kawasaki motorcycle in about fifteen different pieces and a sea of shattered glass being swept into a pile by the firemen while a handful of state troopers in brimmed hats stand off to the side of the roadblock, chatting animatedly about something Connor can’t hear. They look far from grim despite the dark blood spotting one of the sheets, working the steady grind of just another day on the job.

“You make any more progress on my blight to modern humanity?” Hank asks once they’re back up to speed, and when Connor looks up at him with wide eyes he only waves his hand somewhere toward the phone in the seat between Connor’s legs. “Hoping maybe I’d broken a world record with those emails.”

“Oh—oh yeah,” Connor says with a tiny laugh, consciously trying to push the image of that little boy from the front of his mind like it’ll physically draw Hank into his guilt like a moth to the flame. “I’m still sorting through them, but we’ll get there. It’s probably a three-man job.”

“Find anything good?” Hank asks, and Connor wants to sink into his seat and shrivel away.

“No,” he manages to say. “Unless you count about eighty spam emails about male enhancement products.”

Hank barks out a laugh at that, almost too loud. “Well,” he says, reaching up to pull at the neck of his undershirt. “Anything to keep the old engine running, I guess—”

The truck lurches and chokes, and at first Connor thinks they’ve run over something in the road, but then steam starts pouring up from the hood and Hank’s eyes widen as he spits out a string of swears. The cab fills with the unmistakable smell of heat coming off searing metal and Hank pumps the breaks until they can pull off onto the shoulder, sending gravel flying up into the air.

“We’re in for it now,” he says, more cryptic than Connor was hoping, and then is down out of the rig like a shot. He barely skims the flat of his hand to the top of the hood and when he draws it back fast, Connor knows it must be burning to the touch.

Traffic speeds by on the left while Hank goes around to dig in his toolbox, and Connor tells Sumo to stay put while he climbs down into the cool late morning air and walks around to look at the front of the rig for himself. It’s all in one piece, no dings or dents indicating they’d sucked anything through the chrome grill, but faint curls of steam are still rolling up and the look on Hank’s face when he comes back carrying a footstool and a wrench big enough to break a window doesn’t bode well for the long haul.

“Do me a favor,” he says, pulling a work glove out of his back pocket and sliding it on before moving to open up the hood. “Get down there on the ground and see if anything’s leaking, but then pray it’s not.”

Connor kneels down and peers under the rig, and sure as the world there’s bright green fluid dripping out into the dirt. When he stands back up Hank glances down at him and reads his expression before Connor even opens his mouth.

“Coolant?” he asks, gnashing his teeth and throwing the wrench down on the ground when Connor nods. “God fucking damn it.”

“What do you think happened?” Connor asks, watching Hank turn around and slump off the stepladder. He wants to get up and look for himself, and takes the initiative to go in for a peek while Hank collects his wrench and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“I don’t think, I already know,” Hank sighs while Connor leans in under the hood, punching in a number by memory. “Get a good look there between the cylinder head and the engine block. See that shit? Head gasket is blown out.”

“Tell me what that means in peasant English,” Connor says, squinting down at Hank from the top of the stepladder.

Hank swears again and ends the call to try another number, dialing this one by memory as well. “Means we’re not going anywhere fast,” he says. “And that Fowler is going to go so far up my ass about this botched haul that I probably won’t walk straight for a month.”

Somebody finally picks up on the other end of the call and Hank’s voice shifts into something more serious. “Hey, Jeff?” he says, hitching a hand up on one hip while he looks down the long highway. “We got a problem.”  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


They sit on the side of the interstate for the next two and a half hours. Hank makes so many calls and takes so many rips off his flask that Connor’s almost thankful they’re stranded and the truck won’t crank without choking. He and Sumo recline in a wedge of shade casting down off the tanker, watching Hank wear a groove in the ground while he paces like a bull and starts cussing local mechanics out on the phone with some of the most creative language Connor’s ever heard.

“I don’t fucking care if your slobbering shithead kids gotta eat this week!” he shouts, throwing a hand up in the air at nothing. “Five fucking grand for a new head gasket is grand larceny and I’d sooner send this rig off a fucking bridge into the Mississippi before I wrung a single goddamn dime outta my dick for a price like that, you shit-mongering cocksucker!”

It goes on like that without much success on the other end of the phone. Connor eats two honeybuns and gives half of one to Sumo, partway considering pouring out the glass cleaner bottle full of booze and facing whatever wrath may come when a different idea strikes him instead.

“Hank,” he says, calmly but firmly when Hank hangs up on a call for the sixth time. “Let me call the next place and talk to them. You need to take a break.”

Hank stops and gapes at Connor like he just sprouted a second head. He’s not quite swaying on his feet yet but he staggers some and has to grind his boot down into the dirt to keep straight. “Don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous,” he says, waving Connor off. “This is par for the course with these crooks. I’m working my way toward a deal, here.”

What he’s working his way toward is more like phone harassment and a write-up for public intoxication, but Connor doesn’t say that. “Just let me give it one shot, at least,” he says, putting on a little smile and dipping his head so he’s looking at Hank from the corner of his eye. “I’ll put my natural charms and people skills to use. What’s your max payout for the repair?”

Hank looks visibly constipated but glances between Connor and the phone in his hand and then tosses it over like a softball before reaching for the flask again. “I’ll go up to two and a half, but don’t expect much,” he says, going in for a swig but apparently finding it empty, tipping the container upside down and looking up at the cap in betrayal. “They’re gonna eat you alive.”

“Yet to be seen,” Connor says lightly, and then scrolls through the Google page for local Kentucky truck mechanics until he finds a number Hank hasn’t already called. The first one on the list is _Mean_ _Maude’s Shop N’ Parts_.

Connor takes a deep breath and dials. Somebody picks up on the second ring, and a female voice that sounds like it has smoked no less than two packs a day for the past forty years answers with, “What you want?”

“Is this…Mean Maude?” Connor asks, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn’t giggle at himself.

“Who the fuck else?” Maude asks while something like a candy wrapper crinkles in Connor’s ear. “You crank calling me, you little prick, or were you looking for something in particular? Cuz I ain’t got all day to sit here with a thumb up my ass.”

Connor immediately shakes it down to business. “I’m calling on behalf of my driving partner, Hank Anderson,” he says. “We’re stranded on I-75 not too far from your shop and need a tow and a new head gasket for a Peterbilt, but were hoping to get a fair price. Maybe you could give us a quote that’d knock out all the local competition.”

“I knock ‘em out anyway, honey,” Maude says. “You must be a Yankee. You a Yankee?”

“I’m from Michigan,” Connor says. “Yankee by proxy.”

“Figured,” Maude says, and then lapses into a hacking coughing fit. Once she’s recovered she comes back with a slight wheeze while Connor listens to the flick of a lighter. “You needing labor to install the gasket?” she asks, sucking a pull off her cigarette and exhaling into the phone. “My mechanic’s out ‘til tomorrow. His wife sat down on the commode this morning and had her baby in the toilet bowl, stirred up a whole fuckin’ rigmarole.”

Connor blinks but rolls with the punches. “Uh, that’s a real shame,” he says, and then presses the phone against his chest to flag Hank down. “They can’t replace it until tomorrow,” he hisses.

Hank narrows his eyes and swears under his breath. “How much?”

Connor brings the phone back up to his ear and says, “What’s your price?”

“Two and a half grand for the gasket and work, cost you two-fifty for a tow to the shop and a dollar on every mile after the first 20.”

“We’re a long way from home,” Connor tells her even though his heart jumps at the prospect. “I didn’t want to keep calling around town, but I’m sure somebody can beat that rate.”

“Nobody’s gonna beat that price unless you knock it out of them with a crowbar,” Maude says, but then goes quiet for a second. “Two and a quarter,” she decides. “But if you can’t pay that, good luck hoofing your snowy white ass back up to Michigan.”

“We’ll do it for two and a quarter, then,” Connor says, which makes Hank’s head snap up fast. “When can the tow be out here? We’re in the blue tanker rig not far from marker 450.”

“Might take me an hour or more with traffic,” Maude says. “I don’t move like I used to, but I’ll be there.”

Connor has her write down Hank’s cell number and then closes out the call, passing the phone up into Hank’s hand when he trudges over to get it, looking significantly more sobered in the face of a forthcoming bill. “How in the hell did you talk them down to two and a quarter?” he asks. “Every other bastard I called wouldn’t go any lower than four grand.”

“I’m gifted,” Connor says, squinting one eye shut into a long wink. He doesn’t mention anything about the tow fee or that Maude had a decent enough price to start. “Might behoove you to keep me around in the long run.”

“I’d fucking say so, Jesus,” Hank says, pushing his hair out of his face before stealing another glance at Connor again like he can’t quite believe it. He looks like he’s going to open his mouth and say something else, but whatever it was gets drowned out by the clipped blast of a horn. They both turn to look and find a bobtail rig pulling off the road onto the shoulder, coming to a seamless stop behind Hank’s truck.

Hank’s eyes light up in something akin to familiarity when he sees the pristine white cab and he immediately starts off at a fast walk toward the newcomer, only slipping once in the loose gravel. Connor stares after him and then scrambles to his feet, jogging down the length of the tanker with Sumo trailing behind on the leash until he’s walking inside Hank’s shadow.

“Who’s that?” he asks, but Hank’s already greeting the tall man stepping down out of the truck with all the measured grace of a dancer. Connor’s eyes nearly bug out of his head when he gets a load of the black turtleneck and slacks the other driver is wearing, all of it perfectly pressed without a crease in sight.

“Hey Dick!” Hank crows. “I guess Jeff sent you down to pick up the pieces again.”

“You know I go by Richard, Hank,” the man says coolly, and then stops a few feet away when his icy eyes swivel over to Connor’s face. “I understand you’ve blown a head gasket. Who is this?”

Hank slides his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels a bit, cheeks gone even ruddier than before. “Uh, well, this is—”

“My name’s Connor,” Connor says, stepping in front of Hank to hold out his hand. Richard’s eyes flick down to look at it before he reaches out for a shake, grip like hot iron despite the cold wind ripping through them as it comes off the highway.

“Hello, Connor,” he says. Unlike Reed he has nothing to say about the fact that Connor’s obviously been beaten bloody somewhere inside the past week. “I haven’t seen you with the company before.”

Hank opens his mouth again but Connor is faster yet. “I’m the newest recruit in training,” he says, tipping his chin up a fraction to make up for the few inches of height difference between him and Richard. The lie comes so easily he almost fools himself. “I’ll be signing on to work with Hank permanently when we get back to Detroit.”

Richard’s mouth twitches almost imperceptibly. “Oh,” he says, looking between Hank and Connor with one eyebrow arched. “Well, I imagine I’ll be arriving back in Michigan well before you do, so I’ll be happy to send along the news when I deliver this tanker to Fowler and our client.”

Hank is looking ashen in the face all of a sudden and clears his throat, swallowing thickly. “That won’t be necessary, Richard,” he says. “I’m just glad you were able to get down here so fast on short notice—we all appreciate your efficiency on the job.”

“Yes, I do take my work seriously,” Richard says, and then reaches down to retrieve a pair of leather gloves from his slacks pocket before pulling them on. He looks more like a fucking European spy from the 60s than a truck driver and Connor keeps stewing closer to a boil by the minute for a reason he can’t quite put his finger on yet.

Richard walks away and heads directly for the trailer hitch on Hank’s truck. He works quickly and silently, uncoupling the tanker from the rig with all the efficiency of a well-oiled machine, and then asks Hank if the truck has enough engine power left to crank and pull forward a few feet.

“I’d rather not have to get the chain out and tow you,” he explains frankly, reaching up to smooth a piece of loose hair back in place. “We’re already short on time as it stands.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Hank says doubtfully, and it takes five or six death rattles before the engine finally turns over and roars to life. He pulls ahead out of the way before he lets it die again, antifreeze and oil dripping from the undercarriage even faster than before. He slams the door and stomps around to stand off to the side by Connor, the two of them watching as Richard carefully removes his gloves and saunters back over to climb up into his rig.

“What’s up with that fucking guy?” Connor asks out loud, a lot more cross than he’d meant to sound. “He’s like—Clark Kent working his blue collar day job.”

Richard fires up the white truck and pulls around in front of the oil tanker before reversing back in perfect alignment with the hitch. He does all of this in about thirty seconds flat, and Hank doesn’t do anything but shrug his shoulders.

“Rich is some character, alright,” he says, and then bumps his elbow into Connor’s with a knowing slant to his eyes. “He’s one of the only guys in the company that’ll toe up with Reed. You should see it go down sometime—like some _Wild Kingdom_ shit where the lion squares up with a hyena and rips its throat out.”

Connor ignores that in lieu of something else festering in the back of his mind. “Do you think he looks like me?”

“Who?” Hank blurts out as Richard swings down out of his truck and goes back to begin coupling the tanker with his rig. “ _Richard?_ What the hell kind of question—”

“We have the same complexion and overall build,” Connor tuts, squaring his shoulders for emphasis. “Obviously my fashion sense and face is a little lacking right now, I was just wondering if you saw any similarity.”

Hank reaches out and claps Connor on the back, but instead of letting his hand fall away he lets it linger there for a moment. “You don’t look like a catalog model with a stick shoved up your ass, so I’d probably say no,” he says, and pats Connor again one more time for good measure.

Connor misses the firm weight of his hand the second it falls away. His eyes skirt over Hank’s profile, handsome in the tint of afternoon light, and he wants to ask more, prod more, get— _more_. But Hank’s eyes are caught somewhere in the middle distance, the crease between his brows drawn into a furrow while his mind rolls over something Connor wishes he could flush out like a game bird.

Richard chooses that moment to walk back over, not a drop of sweat on his face or a smudge of grease on his clothes. “Well, I think that takes care of things,” he says before reaching out to clasp Hank and Connor’s hands again like a businessman closing a sale. “Good luck with the repairs. I’ll see you somewhere around the warehouse, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank says with a snort. “Send all my love to Jeffrey.”

After they watch Richard haul the tanker back out onto the interstate and resume the last leg north out of Kentucky, Hank goes to get his whiskey stash out of the toolbox and then doesn’t even have the heart to fill up his flask, just sinks down on the running board and draws a long drink straight out of the bottle labeled _glass cleaner_.

Connor means to say something reproachful but only reaches down and takes the offered bottle from Hank’s hand when it’s offered up to him.

“What now?” he asks, necking a burning mouthful off the top. It makes his ears and cheeks hot, but it’s a welcome reprieve from the chill they’ve been standing in for three hours.

“Hell if I know,” Hank says, not bothering to take the booze back from Connor. Sumo pushes his head into Hank’s lap and earns a few ear rubs for his effort. “Guess we’ve got some time to kill.”

Connor turns and looks up and down either side of the highway, eyes peeled for any sign of a tow truck. In the meantime it’s all he can do not to have explicit fantasies about finding somewhere to take another hot shower and crawl into a soft bed.

Hank pinches the bridge of his nose and screws up his face like he’s nursing a headache, and considering the amount of hard liquor still brewing in his blood he probably is. Still he asks, “What’s the number one thing you’d want to do in Kentucky?”

Connor takes another sip of whiskey and caps the bottle before sticking it under his arm. “Have a hot meal and sleep for twelve hours straight.”

Hank laughs at that, weary but genuine. “Thank Christ we think alike,” he says, just as Mean Maude’s bright purple wrecker rumbles over a crest in the road and pulls up behind them.  
  


  
* * *  
  
  


The day grows longer in the tooth with all the quickness of frozen molasses. By all means they should already be back in Detroit with a handful of hours to spare before dark, but instead they’re standing in front of mechanic’s bay watching Hank’s rig get dropped off at the overnight garage by a 65-year-old woman with half a clove cigarette permanently stuck in the corner of her mouth.

Connor had ridden on the hump seat in Mean Maude’s tow truck, wedged there between Hank and the old gal with the stick shift rattling between his knees. There’d been so many tools crammed on the rear bench that Sumo had barely fit in the cab at all, but in the end they’d made it back to Shop N’ Parts in one piece. Now they’re out standing in the cold again, Sumo looking even more despondent where he’s plopped his ass down in the dirt next to Connor.

“Why were you puffing up around Richard?” Hank asks without warning, mouth wavering into a little smile even though his eyes are on Maude. “Reed didn’t even bother you like that.”

A tiny surge of something jolts through Connor like a live current. “Who says I was puffing up?”

“Me,” Hank says. “Because you most certainly fucking _were_ , just short of swinging dick. But it was kinda cute, honestly.”

That takes some of the bluster out of Connor’s sails. “Cute?” he says, turning pink when it comes out more like a yelp.

“Mhmm,” Hank says, sniffing. “You sweet on him or something? He’s a real looker but all forest fire—nice to look at from a distance but burns like hell to the touch.”

“No, I’m not _sweet on him_ ,” Connor grits out between his teeth. That couldn’t be further from the truth. “And how would you know what he’s like? Do you fight enough forest fires in your spare time to know from personal experience?”

Hank scoffs. “Oh no, not me,” he says. “Not my type by a long shot. But I’ve…heard things, around the company. Most of those guys are as straight-laced as they come, but word travels sometimes.”

“Great,” Connor says. “Trucker gossip. Heard it on the grapevine.” But his mind’s reeling around the fact that Hank must have a type other than his ex-wife. A type that isn’t female, either, because Richard’s one tall drink of 100% virile wa—

“You two got lodgings for the night?” Mean Maude’s voice calls out from across the yard as she steps down out of her wrecker and slams the door. “Because you sure as shit ain’t sleeping here on my property.”

Hank walks up to meet her and passes the promised $250 cash into her hand for the tow, looking a little crestfallen to see the bills in his wallet go. “No ma’am,” he says. “Is there anything nearby you’d recommend?”

“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily _recommend_ it,” Maude says, folding up the bills and cramming them right down into her brassiere, “but there’s Willy’s Motorway there acros’t the street. They got cable and hot water, but that’s about the best you’re gonna find for a few miles.”

Hank and Connor gaze across the road in tandem to look at the single-story motel painted bright salmon pink. It’s so rundown all the water’s been drained out of the swimming pool and somebody has strung their wet laundry out on a line tied between their door and the side view mirror on their truck. Next door is a Denny’s diner advertising Saturday night’s chicken-fried steak special on their letter board sign.

“Guess we’ll be at Willy’s,” Hank says, sounding strained. “What time do you open up shop in the morning?”

“Mechanic should be here to start work by 6:30,” Maude says. “Barring any troubles and your timely payment, we’ll most likely put you back on the road by noontime.”

“Alright then,” Hank says, and goes to clasp her gnarled hand in agreement. “Do you take credit?”

“Only the good kind,” Maude says, but then nods as she reaches for her cigarette case and lighter again. “I got a fancy new chip reader back in the office, so we’ll get y’all fixed up.”

Hank crams a few toiletries and essentials from the rig into a duffel bag and she shoos them out of the auto yard after that, sliding the chain link gate back into place before chaining it up for the afternoon. It’s only after Mean Maude’s disappeared into her office and slammed the door that Hank swears under his breath.

“God damn it,” he says, shaking his head in lament. “I left the glass cleaner bottle in the toolbox.”

Connor doesn’t have too much sympathy. “Probably for the best,” he says.

“Easy for you to say,” Hank sighs, but then turns around and tugs on Sumo’s leash so they can jaywalk across the boulevard straight into Willy’s parking lot. It’s only just now pushing four o’clock but everything is already starting to tint golden as the sun sinks lower in the sky.

Something about the autumn afternoon stirs up something in Connor that he hasn’t let himself stop and feel for a long time. Nostalgia mixed with an invigorating little pinch of renewed vigor, like the dying leaves have used their last breath to put a small spell of hope in the air. It doesn’t make much sense in the big picture, but Connor lets the feeling wash over him anyway so it soaks down into the flannel coat Hank had given him.

They might be broke down in the middle of Kentucky and hurting for cash but then again, shit could always be worse. And it _had_ been worse until it’d suddenly started getting better. Connor reminds himself that he’s thankful for the present, thankful for warm clothes even if they’re too big and thankful for honeybuns even if he should’ve stopped eating shit like that when he was a teenager.

Thankful for a lot of things he can’t even count, but mostly thankful for a well-meaning man and his dog.

  
  
  


The rest of the afternoon passes in long-exposure snapshots until dusk falls at last. There are hot meals to be found at Denny’s and Connor forgoes breakfast this time for as much greasy protein he can cram into his stomach without feeling sick. The food is good and even better because it’s dirt cheap, and the chicken-fried steak special winds up being a blessing in disguise even though Connor’s never had a bite of the stuff in his life.

“I think I might be a convert to southern cooking,” he tells Hank, who’s sitting across from him on the other side of the red vinyl booth with a mug of coffee in one hand. His other arm is stretched along the back, reading glasses balanced on his nose while he looks at a newspaper spread out on the table.

“You ever had biscuits and gravy?” Hank asks, not bothering to look up from the paper while his eyes flick to the next article. When Connor says no he only gives a short shake of his head, acting like Connor’s been exempt from one of the life’s greatest pleasures. “You’ve been missing out, kid.”

It’s all small talk but Connor’s not upset, exactly, just—craving something else. But he dares not bring up the photos in Hank’s phone, or even the moment they’d shared under the overpass from the long night before. It feels so fragile somehow, like spun glass breakable to the touch, but he can’t stop thinking about it. It makes so many of the hollow parts inside him ache. It’s a familiar ache, and Connor tells himself once again that he’s a fucking fool.

Even so, when Hank pays he walks out first and holds the door open for Connor, the two of them walking together back to the lot next door. The room they’d rented for the night at Willy’s is a single with a fold-out couch, and nobody’s made claim to either yet in terms of sleeping arrangements but Connor’s already building up an argument in his head for why Hank needs to take the bed when he inevitably decides that Connor’s the one who should have it instead.

Sumo is all wags and smiles back in the room but there’s some new wall of tension manifested in the air that hadn’t been at the Motel 6 a couple nights before. Connor feels it laying on him like a ton of bricks even after he showers and shaves, and Hank must be feeling it, too, because he pulls a quarter out his pocket and says they’ll flip for the queen-sized bed.

“Call it in the air,” he says, and Connor wins with tails but then tries to play best two out of three with some secret hope that he loses, if only for Hank’s benefit.

“Nope, I’m good,” Hank grunts, sinking down onto the mangy sofa with a loud pop that seems to radiate from one of his knees. “I probably won’t be able to get back up again, anyway.”

The last couple hours of the evening go on like that, in a dark room lit up by nothing but a tiny lamp and the humming television set. Sumo snores where he’s sprawled next to Hank on the couch, and only when Connor snaps off the light on the bedside table and hunkers down under the covers does Hank slowly get up and go to start the shower in the bathroom.

Connor listens to his nighttime routine unfold—take a piss, wash up, dry off, tap the toothbrush twice on the edge of the sink. Quickly comb through his hair and save a quick shave for the morning. When the door opens to let out a cloud of steam and the glow from the bathroom, Hank pads into the room with a towel bunched around his waist to find the clean clothes he’d forgotten, and Connor can’t help but let his eyes wander even if he’s meant to be sleeping.

The tattoos come as a surprise. It’s too dark to make out anything in detail, but there’s definitely something big spanning across Hank’s chest with some kind of scroll or cameo design. There’s another dark shape on his shoulder and maybe even more than that under the towel, and Connor’s curiosity is enough to burn a hole through him where he lays.

Hank’s body is mature but still undeniably solid, even with the low light doing it more favors than a closer inspection may merit. His arms are strong and the definition in his chest has probably waned some with age, everything gone a bit more barrel-shaped as the years keep coming and going. Connor’s only thought is how it’d felt to be pulled in tight against Hank’s chest, sturdy and soft all at once.

He closes his eyes when Hank turns around with a wad of clothes in his fist, then waits until the bathroom door creaks before he peers through his lashes again. The door’s only shut halfway, leaving a wedge of yellow light to cut through the middle of the room like a knife. Connor can see the top side of the mirror from where he lays and watches the upper half of Hank’s reflection while he gets dressed. A pang of shame courses through him but he can’t quite look away, picking out a few new scars on Hank’s back and stomach that look even worse than the one on his arm.

The bathroom light clicks off and Hank’s silhouette walks back out into the room, headed for the fold-out sofa. He manages to get Sumo down long enough to start pulling the cushions off, and that’s when Connor hears his own voice betray him through the dark.

“Hank,” he says, and Hank immediately goes still with a cushion held in one hand.

“What is it?” he asks, soft and wary all at once. Their voices sound different somehow when they can’t quite see each other.

“Come get in the bed,” Connor says, watching the other man’s shadow. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

Hank is silent for a few beats. “You’re already in the bed,” he rasps, like Connor really ought to know better.

“I know,” Connor says, swallowing against the sudden dryness in his mouth. “It’s big enough for both of us.”

He waits like that, clinging to the side of the mattress and blinking furiously against the dark, caught somewhere between a prayer and regret until he hears the soft shuffle of Hank’s bare feet on the carpet. It takes an eternity for him to cross the room, but then his fingers touch the foot of the bed as he passes and Connor almost sighs in relief when the mattress dips down on one side.

“You’re sure this is alright?” Hank asks, still sitting up. Connor can practically feel how tense his muscles are from several feet away, poised somewhere between internal fight and flight.

“It’s fine,” Connor says, still facing away. His heart is thudding but nowhere near as fast as it had been that other night when he’d gotten scared. Now he’s just tired, and he wants Hank to lie down and close his eyes so they’ll both feel better in the morning. “Get some rest, Hank.”

The conversation ends there, and Hank gently pulls back the sheets before sliding himself in on the other side. He turns over once and then decides he’d rather sleep on his back, settling with one hand behind his head and the other draped across his stomach. He sighs against the dark, and the space between them seems endless even though Connor could reach out and touch Hank if he wanted to.

And God, he wants to. That ache is so real he almost gives in to wanting, but in the end he stays where he is and hugs the edge of his pillow instead. Wanting gives way to exhaustion, and exhaustion pulls him under the opaque veil of dreamless sleep.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a lot of dialogue! I hope you guys enjoyed meeting Nines, albeit briefly :) I do think we'll get to see him and Gavin again somewhere for that Wild Kingdom showdown, or at least I certainly hope so.
> 
> I may have to put the next update on temporary hold while I crank out some work on my HankCon Big Bang fic, which is due at the end of this month [sweats]. I'm also working on some grad school application nonsense that requires my academic brain to get a grip, but I'll be back with chapter 7 before you know it. Until then, thank you for all your ongoing support and kindness ❤ This has been the most fun I've had writing a fic in years!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, showing up at the neighborhood barbecue with a container of store-bought macaroni salad I picked up on the way there EVEN THOUGH I already told y'all I couldn't make it last week because of work commitments: "Uh, surprise?" 
> 
> Turns out I can't stop writing this nonsense even when I've got more important things to do, so here's your weekly update lol. Enjoy!

   
  
Hank sees pale sunlight through his eyelids before he even opens them. It’s autumn in the orchard now, the air gone crisp and cold enough to snap. Leaves crunch under his boots while he walks and the trees are nearly buckling under the weight of unpicked apples. Cole is already at his side, wearing the new coat Jennifer bought him on his sixth birthday.  He’d hardly been able to wear it once that year before—

“You’re back!” Cole says, pink in the cheeks and bright-eyed as ever. He takes a big crunching bite out of an apple and passes the rest up to Hank, the two of them trading back and forth while they walk. “What happened to your hand?”

Hank looks down at his knuckles while he chews, surprised to find the purpled bruising has carried over into a dream. Somehow he can’t bring himself to tell the truth even though Cole’s just a moving memory in his own head.

“Oh, this?” he says before tucking the offending hand away and out of sight in his coat pocket. “Hurt it at work doing something stupid.” At least the stupid part is true.

Cole takes the last bite of apple and spins the core between his sticky fingers, twirling it by the stem. “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he says in a six-year-old’s singsong voice. “That’s not what Connor told me.”

Hank stops dead, the leaves gone silent under his feet. “Connor?” he rasps, immediately looking around for signs of a familiar face under the heavy-laden trees. “Is he here again?”

“Nah, not right now,” Cole says, pitching his apple core off somewhere into the brush. “He stopped by earlier but had to leave really fast.”

Hank feels his mouth pull down into a small frown. “What’s that mean, bud?” he asks. He feels like an idiot for asking his own subconscious this shit, but when it’s wearing Cole’s face he can’t quite stop himself. “Last time you said he’d gotten lost.”

Cole shrugs. “He did,” he says. “But he finally figured it out, I guess.”

The sun seems to be climbing higher in the sky, lighting up the orchard with golden dawn. A breeze blows through and sends up a flurry of red and yellow leaves, and Cole’s laughter is like music as he runs ahead and stomps through them in his rubber boots.

Hank blinks against the brightness of morning, reaching up to shield his eyes from the sun with his hand. “When’s Connor coming back?” he asks his son. He should be enjoying this moment without any questions, if only to see Cole laugh and play for as long as he can.

“Soon!” Cole hollers, making a running start for a larger pile of dry leaves raked up by one of the apple trees while Hank tries to keep up. “You should ask him about me sometime.”

Hank opens his eyes again to find the sun shining directly into his face through a gap in the curtains. It takes him a moment to leave the orchard behind, the smell of dead vegetation and damp earth still lingering even though they’re in a rented room at Willy’s Motorway. He squints and turns his face away from the window, and when he does he nearly skims the crown of Connor’s head with the tip of his nose.

Swallowing down a surprised sound in the back of his throat, Hank blinks awake even more but doesn’t move. He looks at the empty space at his left and then back to Connor sleeping soundly at his right. They must’ve both moved sometime during the night without waking up, probably rolling into the middle of a shitty mattress that was too soft. The dull ache in Hank’s lower back seems to confirm as much, but he’s too busy worrying that Connor’s going to wake up and panic to care about that.

They’re not exactly wound together but the curve of Connor’s spine runs along the length of Hank’s right arm. His left arm feels fuzzy with loss of circulation from sleeping with it tucked behind his head, and he slowly pulls it out from under the pillow and waits for a small eternity until the blood starts moving again. Connor only breathes in gentle huffs, in and out, the rise and fall of his lungs something Hank can feel as Connor’s ribcage expands with each new pull of air.  

Hank clenches his eyes shut tight for a moment, finding there’s still a knot of tension headache clinging to the base of his skull. He hasn’t slept with somebody else in a bed like this in fuck only knows how long. It’s—weird. It’s _weird_ , and he knows he needs to get up before Connor wakes, but hell if another part of him doesn’t really want to move just yet.

That’s a thought Hank doesn’t quite know how to process. He pinches the bridge of his nose and ponders the welcome convenience of an early demise instead.

Sumo rouses across the room and slowly ambles down off the fold-out couch, stretching with a wide yawn and a content grunt. He pads over to Hank’s side of the bed with his tail wagging and looks between him and Connor with bloodshot but curious eyes. _Well then, what have we got here?_

The dog brings up one paw to step onto the bed and join them until Hank holds a finger against his lips and glares hard. “No,” he mouths silently, pushing Sumo’s foot back down. Connor sighs in his sleep, legs moving some under the sheets so his bare heel skims Hank’s calf, and Hank feels electricity shoot up his leg like he’d stepped on an eel. He contemplates tucking and doing an army roll off the mattress straight into the floor, but in the end only pushes Sumo back and peels himself out of bed one inch at a time until he can stand and haul ass into the bathroom.

He doesn’t dare breathe until the door is wedged shut behind him. Hank braces his hands on the edge of the sink and leans forward to look at himself in the mirror, staring firmly into his own glassy eyes. The place where Connor’s foot had slid up his leg burns like a fired brand.

It doesn’t even occur to him that he’s gone hard in his boxers until he goes to take a leak and can’t piss more than a few sad drops. Hank closes his eyes and breathes in deep, letting it slowly back out between pursed lips. Tries to think of terrible things, the most awful corners of the world he’s seen, and finds it doesn’t do much to alleviate the thread of hot tension curling in his gut at all.

“God damn it,” he hisses, bending at the waist to slap on the shower faucet so water beats against the bottom of the ceramic tub. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”  

He strips down and steps in the shower while the water is still halfway cold and brings himself off in a half-dozen rough strokes, one forearm braced against the cracked tile wall. Hank stays there and doesn’t move, head still bowed, and rinses his hand under the hot water before stepping beneath the spray. Thinks about how sad all this fucking is while the water plasters his hair to his head and neck. How wrong it probably is, too, depending on who you asked.

Connor may have said he wanted be work partners, but that was all. That was the full and sprawling extent of it, Hank tells himself. Not a single thing more.

_Liar, liar, pants on fire_ he hears again in an echo of Cole’s voice.

He finishes washing up in record time and dresses quickly, not even bothering to pull on his coat or tie his boot laces until he and Sumo are standing outside in the cold. Connor is miraculously still fast asleep in bed and Hank locks the door behind him, pausing to send a brief text to Connor’s new phone. _we r taking a walk, breakfast when you get up._

Sumo leads him around the perimeter of the old swimming pool and does his business at leisure without a care in the world. The morning is still quiet and only a few cars pass by on the roadway, exhaust pipes puffing out heat behind them. Across the street at Mean Maude’s, Hank can see his truck still parked in the lot where they left it yesterday afternoon. A light is on in the garage but nobody’s rolled up the big door just yet. He makes a mental note to call or drop in after breakfast to see how things are going on the repair.

There’s not much else to do so early in the day and Hank finds his mind wandering back to the orchard again, thinking more about Cole this time than Connor. He wishes he’d reached out and hugged him again, pulled Cole into his arms with some small hope that his subliminal memory recalled how it felt to hold his only son close.

Cole’s been dead going on four years, now. Hank feels like another tiny part of him is lost to the grinding wheel of time every single day.

He walks Sumo over to the empty pool deck and sits down on a sun-faded tanning chair, the old vinyl bowing beneath his weight but holding strong. On something akin to impulse Hank takes his phone out of his pocket and taps in the password before navigating over to his email account.

He goes to the cached images and opens up the folder inside another folder where Cole lives. He glances at the _last accessed_ date underneath and almost doesn’t even bother to read it because Hank tries to go as long as he can between these painful trips down memory lane, but there’s yesterday’s date right there, front and center: October 26th, 2018. 11:43 AM.

Hank stares at the date. Fishes his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and slips them on just to really look at it again and make sure his eyes aren’t failing faster than he thought.

They’d been in the rig yesterday morning, still rolling down I-75. There’d been the accident. He remembers passing his phone over to Connor and then briefly closing his eyes. Opening them again and finding Connor with the phone pressed between his knees, looking like he’d see a ghost.

And maybe he had.

Hank pulls his glasses off his face and darkens his phone screen. Drops his temple into the heel of his left hand and murmurs, “Son of a bitch.”  
  


* * *  
  


Connor’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror when Hank and Sumo come back in from the cold, just about fully dressed but still trying to tame his freshly-washed hair. It’s already setting up in waves on top of his head and against the nape of his neck where he’s in most desperate need of a trim, and there’s no hair dryer or gel in sight so he supposes he’s just stuck with what God and cheap motel shampoo gave him.

“I got your text,” he says to Hank, leaning forward to press against his healing eyebrow in the mirror. The scabs on his face have started to turn pink at the edges where the skin is mending back together, gone itchy and tight in the wake of cooler weather.

Hank is sitting on the edge of the bed facing the shitty TV set, flipping around between channels at random. Connor catches sound bytes of a cooking show, studio applause, a morning news report, the musical intro of a children’s cartoon. Hank stops on some public programming broadcast of a local antique show and then doesn’t even watch it, attention strayed to a small rip in the wallpaper behind the television.

Connor feels his anxiety prickle at the sight. He’d almost been scared to open his eyes when he woke up earlier, afraid to find that Hank had gone and left for good or he’d done something humiliating during the night that would drive a wedge further between them. He’d looked at his phone to check the time before any true alarm set in and then sworn aloud in relief when Hank’s message was the only notification on the screen.

“Are you feeling alright…?” Connor asks, turning off the bathroom light and taking a careful step into the room. He hovers in the doorway with one hand hanging on the inside of the jamb and offers up a sheepish smile when Hank’s eyes flicker over. “I hope I don’t recite Plato’s _Symposium_ in my sleep anymore.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Hank says, looking back at the TV. “I went across the street and talked to Maude. Turns out they don’t have the right gasket for the rig and have to overnight one in from somewhere out in California, so looks like we’re grounded here until sometime tomorrow at least.”

Connor’s mouth turns down on one side, watching as Hank gets up and goes to thread his gun holster back on his belt. At least the news from the auto shop would explain why he looks off-balance this morning.

“I wish she’d thought to double check on that yesterday,” Connor mutters, walking over to pick up Hank’s Chucks from where he’d taken them off the night before. He sinks down on the bed in the spot Hank left vacant and starts pulling them on one at a time. “What if you were still hauling the tanker and had somewhere to be? It’s inconsiderate professionalism.”

Hank snorts at that and drops a few handfuls of dog food into Sumo’s bowl. “ _Inconsiderate professionalism_ runs a little more rampant in the business than you’d think, kid. Do yourself a favor and start getting used to it.”

He straightens up and sighs, staring down at his shoes on Connor’s feet. “Maybe we can find you a pair of fucking shoes that actually fit somewhere around here.”

“You know that’s not necessa—” Connor says before he’s cut off by a rumbling gurgle that emanates from his gut. It’s so loud that Sumo’s head jerks up, a few pieces of kibble falling from the corner of his mouth.

“And breakfast while we’re at it,” Hank says, already headed for the door. “Don’t forget your coat.”

Connor sighs but gets up and has to grip the sleeves of his hoodie so they don’t ride up when he shrugs into the green flannel monstrosity. He sweeps around the room and gets the track phone and his useless wallet, and when he goes to slip them in his pockets he finds the crepe paper flower Hank had given him.

Hank is already waiting outside bouncing the motel keychain on his middle finger, but Connor holds the slightly crumpled flower up and spins it once between his fingers before sticking it through the second buttonhole on Hank’s coat as he passes by.

“Peony for your thoughts,” he says, echoing Hank’s words from the night before last.

Hank looks down at the blue tissue paper as he goes to lock the door. “Think I’ll spare you for now,” he says, and plucks the pipe cleaner out of his buttonhole before handing it back to Connor with a thin-lipped smile.

Connor tries not to frown as he tucks the flower back into the safety of his pocket, folding the fuzzy stem inside the flap of his wallet. His mind races down the fast track straight to paranoia, trying to consider anything and everything he could’ve done to piss Hank off since they went to bed last night. Had Hank noticed him watching through the dark as he’d gotten dressed? It feels far-fetched enough that Connor doesn’t even want to ruminate on any other possibilities lest he makes himself fucking sick right here in the parking lot.

“What’s the holdup?” Hank calls out, already standing by the rusted iron fencing around the empty swimming pool. Connor realizes with a start that he’s still standing by their motel room door and jogs to catch up, breath puffing on the chilled air as he goes.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but Hank’s already set out on a fast clip again, heading for the sidewalk that runs parallel to the boulevard. Traffic is starting to build up around the Methodist church on their side of the street, the parking lot already half-full and bustling with families done up in their Sunday best, and Hank makes quick work of looking both ways before cutting across to the other side to avoid them.

“Organized religion gives you heartburn that bad?” Connor tries to joke as he hustles to keep up with Hank. “Jesus, you’re on track to win a marathon this morning.”

“I don’t believe in God,” Hank says simply, still looking straight ahead.

Connor stumbles some on an uneven paver on the sidewalk and nearly bites his own tongue in the process, teeth clacking together in his mouth. Part of him wants to draw back and toe the line of whatever spectacularly foul mood Hank’s in this morning, but the other part rears ahead and decides to charge full speed into it instead.

“Did I do something weird last night?” he blurts out, pounding the pavement in sync with Hank’s long strides. “You’re acting like I personally took a piss in your coffee and if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t do shit to fix it.”  

Hank stops fast enough that Connor overshoots him and has to turn back around and stomp over again. His eyes are calm, the blue there placid and not giving anything away. “What makes you immediately jump to the conclusion that something happened overnight?” he asks.

Connor’s jaw works on a loose hinge for a second but no sound comes out. “I don’t— _what?_ ” he sputters, before pinching his mouth shut and drawing in a deep breath through his nose.

“Don’t be an asshole,” he says, fixing Hank with a glare. “I just got worried when you were already gone this morning. Maybe I roll around the bed and grind my teeth—I don’t fucking know! It’s a valid concern when you sleep with somebody for the first time.”

Connor’s face pales when he hears his own words spark on the air but it’s already too late to take them back. For his part, Hank has nothing to add to that, but the tips of his ears are burning crimson as he continues his trek up the boulevard.

“Just forget about it, alright?” he says after a moment, stopping and half-turning to watch as Connor rakes a hand through his hair in frustration. “Don’t even worry about it. I get antsy as hell when I’m stranded somewhere like this with the truck out of commission—it happens to the best of us.”

Connor heaves out another sigh but nods, closing the gap between them with his hands crammed in his pockets. He’s glad when the smell of black coffee wafts out to meet them from somewhere and he practically leans into it, following his nose until he spots the doughnut shop across the street. Hank shadows his line of sight and grunts when he sees the bakery sign.

“Can’t go wrong with doughnuts,” he says. “You wanna?”

“Please,” Connor says, thankful for amnesty from whatever the hell that little spat was. “Let me drown all my sorrows in bear claws and dark roast.”

“There’s a plan,” Hank says, looking deflated, and this time he lets Connor lead the way through the crosswalk toward their new destination.

  
  


They work through a few cups of coffee and a couple doughnuts apiece sitting in the front window of the shop. The other patrons are mostly old folks come in after early church services, groups of white-headed men who linger and talk too loud and a few ladies still in their coats who get their dozen glazed and jelly-filled pastries boxed up to go.

Hank does his best to keep his eyes cast out toward the street instead of on Connor, whose tongue keeps darting out to lick at the corner of his mouth every time he takes a bite of powdered doughnut and gets sugars on his lips.

Some of the tension from before has melted away and Hank keeps his trap firmly held shut about any other grievances he feels the need to air. They’ll have to wait, he tells himself, because there’s no way in hell he’s going to crack open and stir another can of fucking worms when he and Connor are spending the next 24 hours crammed in one tiny motel room with one bed and a shitty futon between them.

He’s already privately resolved to take the couch tonight—but that’s a thought for later.

With breakfast behind them they strike out on foot again, moseying up the main street and taking a detour through a couple blocks to the east when Hank sees a sign for a rummage sale. There’s not much out here by way of department stores or outlets, and the closest Kmart is a few more miles than he’s willing to hoof it without a car.

“We could Uber,” Connor suggests, leaning in to look at the navigation screen on Hank’s phone before he gets a weird look on his face and steps back.

“Do I look like somebody who _Ubers_ to you?” Hank grouses, waiting for Connor to quit fucking around with his shoelaces before he wraps around the corner and passes a vacant furniture store. “Old towns like this, you’ll probably find something better quality used than you would brand new at a big box store.”

Connor’s in no real position to argue with nothing in his wallet but an ID and an empty debit card, so he only falls into stride beside Hank and follows him to the next block where the rummage sale is set up. There’s old furniture out on the curb, a few busted-looking electronics, and tables upon tables of used dishware, dog-eared books, and misfit kids toys. Connor discovers a box of women’s shoes and bypasses that, and it takes them a full loop around the sale before Hank finally finds a few things in sizes cut for men.

He tosses the first pair of shoes aside after realizing they’re old baseball cleats, still covered in a fine layer of orange clay dust. There are a few pairs of dress shoes that look like they came straight out of 1977 and one lone snakeskin cowboy boot without its match marked at five dollars for the single.

“This is a fucking bust,” Hank says, setting the boot back down on the table next to a pile of neckties. “Unless you want a pair of cleats we’re probably SOL.”

Connor hasn’t quite given up just yet, still digging around in a few messy boxes of t-shirts and jeans. He produces a pair of suspenders and then raises a brown leather boot in triumph, holding it out for Hank to take before diving back in to find the second. He comes up with its mate a few moments later, and both of them have scuffed toes and one of the laces looks like it’s been chewed by some nefarious critter, but the soles are in good shape and they’re only a half-size too big.

“Not a bad fit with thick socks,” Connor says, trying the left shoe on right there on the spot. His jeans are too skinny to pull over the shaft of the boot so he tucks them down inside and does up the laces above his ankle. It’s definitely not a look Hank would ever think to wear himself, but Connor’s still young and trim enough that it looks more intentional than anything done out of bare-bones desperation.

Connor keeps one boot on and looks at the magic marker price scribbled on the bottom of the other one. “Three bucks,” he says.

“Sold,” Hank says, gently thumping his hand on the table like an auctioneer. “Hopefully those won’t get soaked through as easily in the rain and snow.”

He passes a few bills over to Connor to give one of the sale clerks and waits until Connor’s laced up into the other boot, tying the Chucks together so he can carry them as they walk. It’s bright and beautiful out for a Sunday in October, and as they pass by a bubbling fountain in front of the little town’s old bank and a stack of hay bales done up with pumpkins and colorful mums in the central square, it occurs to Hank that he’s really got nowhere to be and nothing to do but exist in this moment with Connor, off-kilter as it may be.

It’s not bad. They’ve got some things to talk about, sure enough, but he’s finding it hard to begrudge the present. Connor’s face may still be a sore sight but it looks better with every passing day, and even more than that he’s got a hint of a tiny smile playing around his mouth as he tips his head back to soak up some of the sunshine. A far cry from the bloodied and wild-eyed man Hank had pulled into his truck from the rain just a few nights before.

“Wish we’d brought Sumo along,” Connor says offhandedly, eyes strayed to a man and a woman with a little curly-headed boy holding hands between them as they cross the street up ahead. Hank watches them, too, before he has to make himself look away. He spies the wistful look in Connor’s eye and almost says something—almost, until Connor blinks and his expression shifts into something else.

“I should tell you more about Florida,” he says abruptly. His eyes are on the ground now, watching their boots crunch through a trampled mosaic of fallen leaves. “When I was there I lived in a commune called Jericho.”

Hank’s forehead furrows as he lets out a surprised sound. “That’s one hell of a way to open a conversation, kid,” he says, peering over at Connor with a cagey look. “You mean like a fucking—hippie colony, or something?”

“Not quite,” Connor says. “They advertised themselves as a safe haven for visionaries and _new ideologies_ —a place for people who wanted to cultivate a future based on innovative communication and equality. I grew up liberal as hell and thought being a registered Democrat and gay was enough to qualify me for a solid membership, you know? It sounded like a way to help make a positive difference at the time.”

“Sounds pretty fucking intense, is what it sounds like,” Hank grunts. They pass a wooden bench on the sidewalk and he backtracks a step, gesturing for Connor to come sit down next to him. “I saw the Scientology headquarters coming up out of Clearwater, even drove by a goddamn billboard, but I’ve never heard of anything called Jericho before.”

“It’s more underground, not on the mainstream like Scientology.” Connor seems to grow restless while he talks, picking around his thumbnail and idly bouncing one knee. “Markus had been talking about it for a while,” he says. “On and off, just pitching the idea around. I knew he was enamored with the concept of a self-sustaining community like that—of using harmony and reason to gain peaceful progress, because it’s all he ever talked about in school—but I didn’t realize how serious he was until he quit his job at the museum and sold his fucking car.”

Connor blows out a sigh, giving a minute little shake of his head. “I couldn’t make rent by myself after the first month,” he says. “I begged him to go back to work but he told me there was a greater mission for him in the world than the life we had in Detroit. Started making these sweeping statements, talking about how we could build a utopia together and shape the foundation for a new revolution.”

Hank’s face darkens some. “That’s some Kool-Aid shit if I’ve ever heard it,” he says. “I’m all about people fighting for their common cause, but Jesus Christ.”

A hollow-sounding laugh comes out of Connor, brittle as the dry leaves under their feet. “Amanda basically said the same thing,” he says. “She warned me, said I needed to let Markus go off on his crusade alone, but of course I didn’t listen. We never saw eye-to-eye on things after I got out of high school and even at 30 years old I let that cloud my vision.”

“Markus was— _is—_ too good, too bright and hopeful for change,” Connor continues. “A better man than I’ll ever be, and I think people took advantage of that to some extent. The best among society don’t usually gain the power they really deserve, but Jericho put him on a pedestal because the people loved him. And Christ knows I loved him, too, so there was no question in my mind that I’d follow him when he decided to go.”

Hank inclines his head at that, still listening even though Connor’s taken a moment to pause. “Love,” he says, wincing when the word sounds fumbled coming out of his mouth. “Makes you do some wild shit.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, nodding. He almost looks pained. “It does.”

“It made me quit my job,” he says. “I cashed out some small assets, sold or gave away almost everything in the fucking apartment. I left my social security card and birth certificate in Amanda’s mailbox at the school and flew to Florida with nothing but a suitcase and the clothes on my back. We had a few grand in cash between us, but at that point I hadn’t even realized yet that Markus had already poured most of the money straight into Jericho’s funding without telling me.”

“Fuck,” Hank says, letting out a low whistle as he leans in another inch. “What the hell happened when you got there?” he asks. “It obviously went pear-shaped somewhere down the line, but how long did it take you to realize something was up?”

“As soon as we got there I knew I’d made a mistake,” Connor says. “They took everything I had and said it needed to be searched and quarantined—turns out I’d never see most of it again. We were told when to get up, when to eat, when to shower, when to gather for communal meetings. I asked to use the landline phone to call Amanda and was put on a waiting list two weeks long. Everybody there seemed to be walking toward something I couldn’t see while I was stuck walking backwards. But Markus naturally embraced it right away, of course, and told me I’d get used to it given enough time.”

Hank snorts. “Did you believe him?”

Connor shakes his head. “No,” he says, and then cracks a tiny smile. “I’ve never been much of one for following the rules, at least when I don’t have the option of choosing for myself.”

“I fought them on little things just to go against the grain,” Connor says, shrugging. “I’d get behavioral strikes on my civic record and then get reprimanded, and every time Markus would go in and appeal with his allies on the council to try and get me out of hot water. They told me I was too far _deviated_ from the central mission, whatever the hell that means. And it went on like that for a while, until I decided I had enough and was ready to go back home to Michigan.”

Hank stiffens up, eyes widening a hair.

“They wouldn’t let me,” Connor says simply. “And that’s when I found out all the money we’d brought with us had been bled dry. Almost everything but a couple hundred dollars cash was gone.”

“What do you mean they wouldn’t let you?” Hank asks. “I mean, I can’t imagine there were guys with assault rifles posted up in guard towers or anything.” He mimes raising a long-sight scope on a weapon, squinting at Connor with one eye. “Picking you off like runaway prisoners. That’d be bad news for Florida’s booming tourism economy.”

Connor rolls his eyes but can’t help but smile. “It wasn’t anything overt like that,” he says. “More—quietly subversive, guess you could say. Threatening. At first they tried to tell me they’d demote Markus’s position as a rising spearhead among the commune, since I was setting a poor example as his companion. When that didn’t work and they couldn’t do shit to knock Markus out of the peoples’ favor, they started going after Amanda.”

“I called bluff at first,” Connor says, pressing his tongue against the healing cut on his lip. “It wouldn’t be hard to access public records and find her name and address, so I wasn’t too concerned. She’s always been capable of taking care of herself. But they started sending pictures of her, uh—pictures of her in her rose garden, getting the mail, leaving her office at the university. Then the threats started coming along, and that obviously caught my attention.”

“Holy fuck,” Hank says. “They sent somebody up there to follow her? You think it was just scare tactics, shit to make you fall back into line?”

“I didn’t spend much time sticking around after that to find out,” Connor says. “Markus woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to get out of bed, we were going somewhere. Walked in the dark all the way to the far eastern wall of the ‘sanctuary’ and looked straight into the security camera and told it to face the wall. Then he opened the gate with a key I hadn’t seen before and told me I was free to go.”

Hank sputters out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s it—free to fucking go? Goddamn, by that point I’d be worried they were going to put a bullet between my eyes and dump me into the Gulf.”

Connor braces his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers across the back of his neck, letting a few curls fall against his temple. “The thought crossed my mind,” he says. “But by that point I didn’t even really care one way or another. Markus had always been a gentle pacifist type, so at least they would’ve given me the element of surprise before blowing my brains out.”

“Anyway,” he sighs, letting his hands drop between his knees. “He handed me a backpack with a few things in it, just some clothes and my toothbrush and whatever money we had left. Said he loved me but Jericho’s stake in the future was more important in the long run and he couldn’t protect me anymore if I stayed. He must’ve realized it was a mistake to bring me—I think he knew my heart wasn’t set in the same place. I wanted _him_ , but he wanted peace and revolution more.”

“How he’ll find both without sacrificing the other, I don’t know,” Connor says. “But if anyone can figure it out, it’s Markus. I always knew he’d change the world somehow, but I don’t know if Jericho’s the right place to do it. Maybe I’m wrong…I hope I’m wrong.”

They sit there in silence for a few beats, watching a few songbirds flit between the sparse trees in the square. Hank thumbs across his mouth before scratching through the whiskers along his jaw, shaking his head for lack of anything else.

“It’s a cult,” he says at last, looking up in realization. “You were in a fucking _cult_ , Connor.”

“I guess?” Connor says blandly. “Just another prime example of me making responsible choices as a sane and functional adult.”

“And Jesus Christ, what about Amanda?” Hank says. “After all that did you call her and see if she was alright?”

Connor rolls his shoulders, cheeks flushing a bit. “I didn’t want her pity or judgement,” he mumbles. “Markus called them off, and the next day I used a payphone to call her secretary at the school. I asked if she was available for an office hours appointment and they told me she’d just gone out to lunch with the department head, so I figured she was doing fine. Markus wouldn’t—he wouldn’t have lied to me about something like that. He never lies about anything.”

Hank only lets out a string of swears under his breath, slumping back against the bench. “I feel like I just watched a two-hour movie in ten minutes. And all this happened—fuck, a few days before you met me? A week?”

“Probably closer to a month, I guess,” Connor says. That amount of time seems to surprise him, even. “I spent a few nights in the bus terminal trying to get enough money for a Greyhound to Detroit before I gave up and walked to a truck stop. Asked around for a ride and kept getting turned down until one guy said he’d take me as far as Ocala if I sucked his dick, so the working game plan pretty much unraveled itself from there.”

“Sometimes I’d hitch a ride, sometimes I wouldn’t,” he adds. “Sometimes I’d sleep outside, a few times somebody would rent a room and we’d…well. It kinda all started blurring together up until the night you picked me up at that place in South Carolina.”

A little flicker of something hot and angry flares up in Hank’s chest. Not anything directed at Connor, but the fact that he could’ve prevented somebody’s suffering if he’d been in the right place at the right time. If he’d found Connor in Florida, somehow, some way, it wouldn’t have ever needed to be as bad as it was. Connor’s face would be bright and clear, maybe like the man Hank saw under the apple tree. He wouldn’t have needed to hurt.

It takes a minute before Hank grasps how protective he’s grown over his traveling companion. Funny, considering that’s a truth he’s been staring full in the face since the night they met. He’d literally drawn his gun and shielded Connor with his body, prepared to throw down in an ugly fight without a predictable outcome. His busted fucking hand is one more leaf added to the book, and somehow Hank doesn’t even care because it was well worth it.

He’s never been much of a sentimental type when it comes to spewing Hallmark greetings out, so instead he says, “I don’t want you to suck a dick you don’t wanna suck for the rest of your life, kid. Only the ones who really earned it.”

Connor laughs at that, his nose and the corners of his eyes crinkling up before his expression smooths out into something more subdued. “Thank you for your pardon,” he tells Hank with a sniff, wiping under his eyes. “Only the most elite dicks from here on out.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Hank says, and then lets his voice drop down a few octaves, neck already flushing in some weird sense of modesty. “Between you and me, it’s better if you stay picky. Find a good one and stick with it.”

Connor’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates as his mouth drops open. “ _What?_ ”

Hank clears his throat and tries to look serious despite where this conversation is headed. “This may come as a shock but I used to be young, too, once upon a fucking time. Had a few experimental flings in my heyday. Might’ve been a dick or two in there somewhere.”  

That’s putting things lightly, Hank thinks to himself. But Connor doesn’t need to know any specifics about the time he got spit-roasted in the dorm room showers in college after most of the residents had gone home for winter break. It’d only happened the one time, after all.

Connor pushes his fingers into his eyes and groans. “What do you mean, ‘might’ve’? You either did or you didn’t, Hank. Not many people go around blowing guys in a fugue state.”  

Hank gets up off the bench with some ado, making more commotion than he really needed to. “Well, I _did_ ,” he grumbles, decidedly not looking at Connor. “Are you satisfied?”

If he’d been watching, Hank would’ve noticed Connor’s eyes flickering somewhere between his eyes and mouth. His skin feels like it’s on fire, and he’s never been more ready to strip out of his coat despite it being just a few degrees above freezing. To think he’d backed himself into this fucking corner.

But Connor only remains sitting on the bench, hands perched on his knees. For a moment he looks like the cat who caught the canary, but it’s a flash come and gone in an instant. Hank is sweating. Connor looks up at him, features held carefully neutral, and says, “Very.”

Hank is going to die. He’s going to die right here in Kentucky, 53 years old, halfway to broke, and tragically sober. Survived only by a nine-year-old St. Bernard and the 31-year-old twink who delivered the fatal blow.

“Well, now that we’ve got all that out of the way,” he tells Connor in a tight voice, “I need something to clear my head.”

Connor gets up, eyes heavy on the side of Hank’s face. “The weather’s not beautiful enough for you?”

“No,” Hank grumbles. “I need something stronger than that.”  
  


* * *  
  


Bourbon may run like water through the ancestral veins of Kentucky, but as it turns out, the stream runneth dry beginning at dawn on the Lord’s Day.

Hank very nearly has a small breakdown in a strip mall parking lot in front of the only liquor store they’ve found in a two-mile radius. The door is locked and the sign has been turned around to read CLOSED. There’s another little memo hanging underneath it, done up in slanting script and a picture of a peaceful white dove:

_Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery._  
_Instead, be filled with the Spirit_  
**Ephesians 5:18**

_We’ll be back on Monday_ _:)_

Connor is leaning against one of the brick and mortar pillars in the breezeway, boots crossed at the ankle. “Maybe this is a sign,” he says. “If I’m going to suck less dick, maybe you should try to dial it back on the booze.”

Hank has to swallow a few choice words in response to that, mumbling something Connor can’t quite make out about _bible-thumping hacks_ and some _holier-than-thou bullshit_. He turns and stomps back out into the sparsely occupied parking lot, looking around until he spies a CVS pharmacy on the corner.

“One shot, one kill,” he says, pointing the way. “Can’t leave Kentucky without trying the bourbon.”  

The clerk at CVS refuses to sell them anything from the liquor shelf until noon with the sole exception of a meat and cheese gift hamper that just so happens to have a few shooter bottles of Wild Turkey tucked inside. Hank isn’t exactly one for artisan sausage and stone-ground wheat crackers, but he dumps the basket on the counter and swipes his credit card through the machine anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

“At least you’re cutting down some,” Connor says, idly swinging the hamper in one hand as they walk back to the motel. He watches as Hank tears the plastic seal off the tiny bottle and downs the whole thing in one gulp.

“At least,” Hank says with a sigh, screwing the lid back on and lifting up the basket lid to drop it back inside. “What the hell are we going to do with all this fancy shit?”

“Eat it, I hope,” Connor says. The doughnuts and coffee he had for breakfast seem to have already run their course, and his stomach had gurgled a little at the sight of the crackers and cheese board. “It’ll be lunchtime soon.”

Hank lets out a yawn, reaching around to press a fist against the ache still camping out in his back. “More like nap time,” he says. “I might set up shop on that futon for an hour or two.”

Ten minutes later they’re back at Willy’s Motorway and Hank makes good on his promise to sink down on the sofa and not move for the foreseeable future. Connor offers to take Sumo back out for another walk and he kicks his boots off once they’re gone, not doing much beyond channel surfing on the tube until his eyes start to droop.

As he drifts off into a daze, his mind does laps around everything he’s learned since waking up that morning. Markus, Jericho, Connor’s time in Florida—all of that’s intangible, almost surreal, like a wet painting with too many details smeared out. Did he dream that, too? Instead of breaking back into conscious reality Hank had simply stepped sideways into a parallel delusion after leaving the apple orchard, one where he could’ve sworn Connor was looking at him with something more than friendly fondness in his eyes.

Hank’s last few thoughts before he drifts off circle back around to Cole, the ripe apples too heavy for the tree, his son’s laughter as he’d tumbled into a pile of leaves swept into the corner of Hank’s mind. And then, further back again to Connor’s clear face and what he might’ve looked like if life hadn’t dealt him such a hard blow.

_You should ask him about me sometime._

Hank can only hold and talk to his dead son, eternally six years old, within the borders of these semi-precious dreams. He doesn’t know why he’d wasted time looking for Connor there when all he had to do was wake up and hold out a hand to find him.

  
  


The sun has shifted through the curtains when Hank opens his eyes again, making hazy dappled shapes on the far wall. Sumo and Connor are still gone and when he looks at his phone he realizes more than two full hours have passed him by, just like that. It’s already well into the afternoon and the room feels too-warm and stuffy with the old heater unit coughing away, so he gets up on creaking joints and goes to open the door.

Cold air hits him like a slap, more refreshing than stinging in the buttery warmth of midday. Across the lot there are two young kids in jackets that hang down to their knees, playing together on the sidewalk while their guardian sweeps leaves off her modest stoop. Hank stands in the jamb and looks around the motel lot for signs of his traveling companions and finds them sitting out by the empty swimming pool, facing traffic on the street as it rumbles by.

He steps into his boots and goes out to join them, scuffing his heel on the pavement so Connor looks up and sees him coming. He’s got the meat and cheese hamper out there with him on an old patio table, apparently in the middle of breaking off tiny pieces of sausage with the hopes that they’ll convince Sumo to learn how to roll over on command.

“Guess they were right about old dogs and new tricks,” Connor says, glancing up at Hank with a meek little smile on his face. He gives up on the training and holds his palm out flat so Sumo can slurp up the morsels in one bite.

“He and I have that in common,” Hank says, dropping down into a vacant chair at Connor’s left. He looks around the dilapidated sun deck and eyeballs the faded mural of sea creatures somebody once painted on the inside of the pool many moons ago. Now there’s nothing but a broken chair and garbage floating in the few inches of dirty water caught in the bottom. “Feels like paradise out here, huh?”

“I’m not complaining,” Connor says, wiping his hands on his jeans before going to dig around in the food hamper again. He comes back up with a stick of maple-cured jerky and a satchel of roasted pistachios, holding them out for Hank to choose between. “I didn’t realize we’d need a knife to cut the cheese and salami.”

Hank takes the nuts and tries not to think about the remaining bottles of Wild Turkey still tucked in the basket. For all he knows, Connor could’ve easily poured them all into the damn dirt while he was knocked out. It’d probably serve him right.

They sit in silence for a spell, listening to the kids briefly argue over whose turn it is to ride the scooter they’ve been zipping around on. Their shouting escalates until it cuts out altogether when the family matron comes out and picks the scooter up in one hand, taking it back inside with her after a firm scolding.

“Now look what you’ve done, you big dummy head,” one of the kids tells their sibling. “You always have to ruin the fun for _everybody_.”

Hank chuckles to himself as he cracks into a pistachio, waiting until the kids’ voices fade away again under the sound of passing cars. Sumo gets up off his haunches to walk around and lift his leg on a patch of dead weeds where the old hot tub used to be. Connor’s staring into the middle distance at nothing, and Hank figures this is a moment as ripe for ruining as any if he wants to air out his dirty laundry.

“Y’know, I thought I’d cash in that old IOU on some truths to make us even again,” he says, crunching the pistachio between his molars. “But it seems you might’ve beaten me to the punch by cruising through those old photos of my kid.”

It takes a moment for Connor to process the words and then all the color drains out of his face almost instantly. He grips the arms of his deck chair and looks at Hank like he’s peering through a kaleidoscope, vision probably distorted around the edges as his blood pressure spikes.

“Hank,” he says, one miserable syllable full of dread. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad about it,” Hank says with a shrug, dropping an empty shell into the pocket of his flannel shirt. He doesn’t quite look Connor in the eye, though. “It’d be remiss of me to think you wouldn’t go looking through shit when I handed the phone over and gave you my password. Hell, I might’ve even done the same thing if I were you.”  

From where he’s sitting, Connor thinks he could probably cry or be sick if he wasn’t so stricken with shame. It’s enough that it almost physically hurts and he doesn’t know what to say. He supposes there’s nothing he can say at all.

Hank gives up on the pistachio he was shelling and simply throws it into the empty swimming pool so it skitters down into the concrete bottom. “His name was Cole,” he says, tightening his jaw. “The password you type into the phone, 10-11? That’s the day he died. Couple weeks after he turned six. He’d been fighting leukemia for about half the year prior to that.”

Connor swallows as some phantom ache tries to claw up his throat. “I didn’t know,” he says, hardly more than a whisper. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Hank.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry about,” Hank says gruffly, though he looks down at his own hands in his lap. “Except maybe that good kids like that have to die young and I get to stick around for no good fucking reason, y’know? Just wasting space. Wandering around aimlessly half the time, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do next.”

He sounds so convinced of what he’s saying that Connor doesn’t know how to take it. He immediately wants to tell Hank he’s wrong, that he’s so much more than that—so much better, and stronger, and kind. But his voice feels trapped and he can’t make it work right.

“Your parents had it easy on their end,” Hank says. Connor freezes in place but waits for him to keep going, heart dashing itself to death like a frantic bird against his ribs. “When a kid loses their parents, they’re called an orphan, right? People know how to wrap their minds around that shit, they can call it something even if it screws the poor kid up forever. But when a parent loses their child? There’s—there’s no fucking word for that. Because the kind of grief you go through, Connor…”

Hank stops, scrubs a hand across his face, looks away. Connor watches the line of his throat waver and bob and work around the emotion rising there, and when Hank’s voice comes back it’s rough-hewn and hoarse. “It nearly kills you,” he says, and then turns to finally look at Connor, not bothering to hide the wetness in his eyes. “If you don’t try and kill yourself first.”

Connor stares back at him. There’s the sound of a car passing on the street, of a motel room door squeaking open and then closing again right away. The kids have gone inside and a strange dog barks once somewhere off in the distance, making Sumo’s head raise to sniff the air. Connor draws in a shallow breath and makes a decision before he can convince himself to stop.

He reaches out to touch the back of Hank’s hand where it’s gripping the arm of his chair, cautious and easy, pads of his fingers skimming the bruised skin where his blood vessels had burst punching the bathroom stall. When Hank doesn’t pull his hand away Connor lays his palm flat and curls his fingers against the other man’s palm. They stay like that, doing nothing at all but holding on.

Hank looks down at their hands and lets out a ragged breath. “I didn’t mean to speak any ill-will toward your folks or what happened when you were little,” he says, quiet. “Hope you can forgive me for that.”

“It’s alright,” Connor says, trying to smile for him. “I don’t think they heard you.”

Hank nods, looking weary, but takes his other hand and brings it over to fold on top of Connor’s. They sit like that for a long moment and then Hank gives a gentle squeeze before slowly pulling away, drawing his hands back into his lap.

“Well,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting to spill my guts somewhere neck-deep in the asscrack of Kentucky, but I guess that’s how shit goes.”

“I’m glad you said something,” Connor tells him, gazing out over the empty swimming pool again. “If only because I was looking in places I shouldn’t have been.”

Hank grunts to himself. “Maybe I should’ve brought it up sooner,” he says. “Or maybe it doesn’t even fucking matter.”

“It _does_ matter,” Connor says quickly, eyes snapping to the side of Hank’s face. “I—I want to know more about him, when you’re ready to tell me,” he stresses. “About…Cole.”

Hank glances over at him, chair creaking some as he readjusts his weight. Nods, and then goes to stand. “One day,” he promises, holding out a hand again to help Connor up this time. “Not today.”

Connor lets Hank pull him to his feet and then gathers the basket up while Hank whistles for Sumo. “We’ve got plenty of time,” he says, and wonders if he’s talking more to himself or to Hank.

“That we do,” Hank says, and Connor figures he's found his answer.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few notes: “Kool-Aid shit” is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown deaths where ~900 Peoples Temple members were poisoned with cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, either by suicide or forced ingestion. You can read up more on that event elsewhere if you’re curious. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” is simply a morbid colloquial expression people in the United States use that basically translates over to something like, “blindly buying into sketchy situations with sketchy people when the reward looks too good to be true.” Obviously the usage of this phrase is controversial, but Hank uses it here because he’s, well…Hank.
> 
> Please know I’m not trying to make any grand political remarks with Jericho’s status as a cult group in this story, I’m simply using the name here in this AU as an interesting plot device. Markus is wonderful and full of all the potential for greatness, but maybe he had to take a strange detour into the wilds of Florida before he found his groove elsewhere. It's all fiction for fiction’s sake and nothing more :)
> 
> Last thing: not sure how prevalent this is outside Southern states, but a lot of small-town liquor stores (and grocery stores) won’t sell alcohol on Sundays. It can be a regional thing depending on your location; where I live, you typically can’t buy it until after 12PM, and then booze is free game after that. 
> 
> Next stop...Ohio! And some much-deserved downtime to start shaving the edge off that sexual tension ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	8. Chapter 8

 

Maude’s call rings in just as Hank and Connor are finishing up breakfast at Denny’s the next morning. Hank holds his phone out at arm’s length to squint at the unfamiliar number there and sets his coffee mug down before answering, cupping a hand over his mouth to block out some of the noise in the restaurant.

Connor pushes scrambled eggs around his plate with a piece of sausage speared on his fork and tries not to yawn even though it’s past ten o’clock in the morning. Hank had so diplomatically decided to crash on the fold-out couch the night before, and despite having the bed to himself Connor had slept fitfully at best, tossing and turning well into the early hours of the morning until he’d finally passed out around four.

There’s a little girl seated with her family in the vinyl booth behind Hank, and she’s been ogling at Connor over the back of the bench off and on for the past five minutes at least. She’s still small enough for a pacifier despite having finally learned to stand, and makes gurgling noises around the binky while waving animatedly at him.

Connor waves back with two fingers and makes a silly face, crossing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks. She giggles at first and then starts wailing almost immediately, little face gone ruddy and pinched while she howls and her mother finally reaches up to quickly pull her away, giving Connor a startled look.

Hank jams a finger into his ear and presses the phone flatter against his head, looking strained. “Alright,” he says into the receiver, a little too loudly. “Yeah, we’ll be there in half an hour. _What?_ No, Jesus Christ, we’re at the damn Denny’s across the street. Okay, tell him I said thanks. Uh-huh, yep—alright. Bye-bye.”

“What’s the verdict?” Connor asks once Hank ends the call, glancing right to frown at his own reflection in the tempered glass window. The little girl’s cries are slowly starting to fade as her mother shushes her and Connor mostly wants to drop his head face-down into his untouched grits.

“We should be able to pay and pickup soon as we check out at Willy’s,” Hank sighs, pressing into either temple with his finger and thumb. “Maude knocked another buck-fifty off the tab for keeping us waiting. Not much of a consolation prize, but at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.”

Hank sighs and picks his coffee back up, taking a long drink. There are dark circles hanging under his eyes like crescent moons and he looks about as tired as Connor feels. Connor knows it’s because Hank couldn’t get comfortable on that fucking fold-out sofa with his bad back and a 180-pound dog sprawled out next to him, but he doesn’t say anything edgewise about it.

They might’ve decided to split ways in terms of sleeping arrangements the night before but at least there hadn’t been any fraught tension in the motel room after their talk by the pool. They’d walked across the street and bought a cheap $5 pizza and a jug of tea from the gas station for dinner, tracked down one of the old _Terminator_ movies on TV and called it a damn night.

“We’ll probably cut up through Ohio, pass through Columbus on the way to Toledo,” Hank says, setting his coffee down to take a bite of jelly-smeared toast. “It’s a pretty straight shot up the 75 into Detroit after that.”

Hearing the timetable drawn out and tangibly real, Connor suddenly doesn’t know how he feels being this close to home again. It’s a little startling and hard to fathom after spending the past month on the road—there had been times he thought the journey might be impossible, and at least one night in particular where he was convinced he’d die before he ever saw Detroit again.

“Did you wanna call that Amanda lady?” Hank asks before bringing his mug back up, watching Connor over the ceramic rim. “At least to let her know you’re finally on your way back into town.”

Connor drops his gaze to his plate, fingers busy picking at a piece of bacon. “I guess I’ll have to at some point,” he says, and then looks up at Hank. “I—don’t really know what I should say. I hadn’t thought it out that far yet.”

Hank blinks, eyes level with Connor’s. For a long moment it seems like he’s searching for something and Connor has to fight the urge to look away.

“Are you afraid of her?” Hank asks, pitched quietly. He leaves the question open and Connor practically squirms across the table from him, breathing hard through his nose.

“Maybe,” he says, trying to keep his voice at an even keel. “When I was a kid. But that was a long time ago—a lot of stuff has changed since then.”

Fear unravels, as Connor knows all too well, and spins itself into other things. Resentment. Avoidance. Distance. An almost visceral bodily reaction to the sight of blooming rose bushes. And yet, Amanda had loved him. She’d looked out for him. She’d been there when nobody else was.

It’s a situation too complicated to explain in the greasy booth of this Denny’s diner during brunch hour on a Monday morning, and Hank seems to realize that belatedly, finding a flicker of whatever he’d been looking for as it shadows across Connor’s face.

“Fuck it, then,” he says with a shrug. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. You’re more than capable of deciding who sits at your table and who doesn’t—that’s the beauty of getting old and jaded.”

Connor nods, picking up his fork again to take a stab at his cold eggs. “I’ll probably drop into her office to pick up my birth certificate once I’m settled in,” he says. He doesn’t mention the part where he’s got nowhere or nobody in the whole state of Michigan to settle with. “I’m not in any big rush.”

Hank heaves out a sigh at that, briefly drumming out a little ditty on the Formica tabletop with his fingers. “Me either, come to think of it,” he says. “Richard picked up the check on the last leg of that tanker and I don’t have another hauling job lined up ‘til the start of next week. Guess me and Sumo are heading out west to Oklahoma.”  

The line of Connor’s mouth turns down on one side and wavers. He feels a strange pang of loss at not being vocally included in the next expedition, as if he had any real right to go along at all—but it doesn’t last, because Hank spins right around and rushes out the next part.

“I haven’t forgotten about those driving lessons, of course,” he says gruffly, scrunching up his napkin in one fist. “We’ll have a few days to focus on getting you started in the rig and then you can figure out where you want to go from there.”

_With you_ , Connor almost says on sudden impulse. He has to bite into the tip of his tongue before it falls out onto the plate in front of him like a dropped stone.

“Sounds great,” Connor says instead. The smile he offers up to Hank is pulled a little too tight at the edges, but the one he gets back in return is genuine.

“Don’t know about you,” Hank says, throwing his last twenty on the table and grabbing one more swig of coffee before moving to stand. “But I think I’ve seen enough of Kentucky for one trip.”

Connor scoots down the booth and stands, and when he does Hank’s broad hand comes up to brush at the front of his coat. He and Connor both look down, standing there in the middle of Denny’s, and then back up at each other.

“Crumbs,” Hank says. And then, clearing his throat. “Uh—sorry. Reflex.”

There is an intense but fleeting moment where Connor—now following Hank across the scuffed checkerboard tile back outside—imagines what would happen if he simply reached out, took Hank by the shoulder, reeled him around, and crushed their mouths together right here in front of God and country and the bedraggled brunch crowd innocently digging their way through sausage skillets and pancake stacks.

_Reflex_ , he’d say if Hank stumbled back with wide eyes, aghast. But Connor doesn’t want him to pull back or withdraw. Some thrumming and hopeful thing wedged like a splinter in his chest doesn’t think Hank would, either, if he could just—

“Let’s pack up this room and get checked the fuck out,” Hank says as they meander back into the craggy parking lot of the motel. “Anything you need before we pick up the truck and hit the road?”

The tips of Connor’s fingers are still tingling when he sighs and says, “No, I think I’m all good.”

  
  


 

Maude has two foam curlers on top of her head when she shoulders through the office door and comes out with a transfer-paper invoice sheet in one hand and one of her clove cigarettes in the other.

“That new head gasket should be tighter than a tick in a dog’s ear,” she says, handing the paperwork to Hank. “Sorry to keep you boys waiting on the fix. You have any issues for the next 500 miles, you call me and I’ll make it right. I’m not in the business of dealing dirty work.”

Hank pulls his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and takes a cursory look over the bill, lips pressed into a thin line. After a moment he reaches for his wallet and hands Maude his credit card with a grim expression.

“How’s your mechanic’s new baby?” Connor asks as she pulls a drag off her cigarette and flips Hank’s card between her fingers like a casino dealer. “The one, uh…born in the toilet.”

Maude turns and hollers somewhere in the direction of the auto garage. “Billy!” she rasps. “How’s that potty baby of yours doing?”

“He’s good!” Billy calls back.

“He’s good,” Maude repeats even though Hank and Connor heard just fine, flicking ash off the tip of her cigarette. “I told ‘em they ought to name him Kenmore or Kohler or something. Get that kid sponsored with the appliance company and start up a damn college fund.”

She turns and heads back into the office, holding up Hank’s card as she goes. “Let me process this payment for y’all, be just a second.”

The door squeals and slams back into place and Hank cuts a look over at Connor. “Potty baby?”

Connor shrugs. “We’re in Kentucky.”

Sumo’s been dancing from foot to foot since the moment he walked into the yard and saw the truck, and when Maude comes back out with a receipt and Hank’s rabbit foot keychain he tugs on the leash with all the strength of a small tank, nearly yanking Connor across the dirt lot.

“Guess somebody’s ready to skedaddle,” Maude says. She pats the rollers on top of her head as she follows Hank and Connor over to the truck to look under the hood, putting a little extra swing in her step. “I don’t blame him, I got me a hot date at the pool hall tonight myself.”

Satisfied with what he sees under the hood, Hank holds out a hand and waits for Maude to stick her cloves in the corner of her mouth before she takes it. “Looks clean,” he says. “Appreciate your help with the rush order.”

“All in a day’s work,” she says, winking at him. “Now get the fuck outta here with your dog and your honey, I got another customer coming in ten and we need the lot space.”

Hank flushes but slams the hood back into place and doesn’t waste any time with hauling himself up into the driver’s seat. Sumo lumbers up on the passenger side and once Connor’s settled in and buckled up with their bags everything seems perfectly aligned, a scene set just as it should be. When Hank turns the key in the ignition and the engine roars to life and purrs out the sweet sound of diesel combustion, it’s so damn good his eyes almost roll back a little.

Connor is looking vaguely bewildered as they pull out of the lot onto the boulevard at long and heavenly last. “Did you hear her say…?”

“Sure did, honey,” Hank tells him, sliding one palm around the steering wheel to flip on the FM radio. Connor makes a tiny strangled sound just as Lynyrd Skynyrd fills the truck cab, halfway into a ballad about a girl named Tuesday. There’s the wide open road ahead and somehow Hank doesn’t have a care in the fucking world.

“We can take our time getting through Ohio,” he says over the music. “You ever seen the state parks there in fall? The trees are so orange the whole place looks like it’s on fire.”

Connor, for one, looks like he’s suffering from whiplash. He shakes his head, mouthing words that aren’t quite making it past his lips. “I thought—what about Detroit?”

Hank waves him off. “We’ll still make it with daylight to spare even if we stop for an hour or two. Driving time between here and the Michigan line is only a hop and a skip, anyway.”

Pulling his phone out, Hank sets it down on the center console and pushes it toward Connor. “Look up somewhere you want to go around Columbus.”

Connor looks down at the phone like Hank just asked him to stick his hand in a bear trap. “Are you serious?”

“No, I’m pulling your fucking leg specifically to get my rocks off,” Hank says, and then picks up the phone and throws it in Connor’s lap. “You know the damn code, now help me figure out something we can stop and look at.”

“I never would’ve guessed you were such a big leaf peeper,” Connor says, brows high on his forehead. But he taps in the password on Hank’s lock screen and pulls up the search engine before hitting the audio button. “ _Free admission state parks near Columbus, Ohio_.”

Hank looks over with the seam between his eyes drawn tight. “What the hell are you asking it?” he says. “Every single park in the state is free admission.”

“Well then they should all come up at once then, shouldn’t they?” Connor fires back, turning his attention down to the phone screen again. “Hocking Hills is the closet to Columbus, and the next one is Mohican about an hour north from there.”

“Alright, so pick one,” Hank says, steering off the county road onto the exit that’ll pull them back on the interstate. “Whichever floats your boat, I don’t care either way.”

That secret part of Connor that wanted to grab Hank in Denny’s raises its head again, and he knows right then that he wants to buy whatever extra time he can squeeze out of this. It’s selfish, an effervescent sort of thing that makes his stomach twist into a ball of nerves, but he’s never been one to back down from what he wants.

“Mohican,” he says, tapping the navigation icon on Hank’s phone screen to seal the deal. “They’ve got a covered bridge.”

Hank snorts at that but takes his phone back to pop it into the hands-free mount on his dash. “You got a thing for covered bridges, huh?”

“Yep,” Connor says easily, looking out the window to hide the line of his throat bobbing in place. “Nothing gets me going faster than an enclosed timber-truss structure.”

“Smartass,” Hank murmurs without much real heat, reaching over to turn the radio back up a notch when he recognizes the tune there. “We’ll see about that.”

 

* * *

 

Connor holds his breath while Hank’s truck breaks over the state line into Ohio, an old childhood holdover from before his parents died. He hadn’t done the same for North Carolina, or Tennessee, and he was passed out cold when they first got into Kentucky, but the thought dawns on him just before they cross the Ohio River and follow I-71 up into Cincinnati.  

He doesn’t make a wish this time, but he remembers the days when he still believed.

Eventually the city gives way to America’s flattened heartland on the western side of the state and Connor feels like he can see for a hundred miles in either direction, all the earth rolled out in an unending quilt. They pass corn mazes and pumpkin patches advertising haunted hay rides and apple cider in the lead-up to Halloween. The road unfurls onward from there and eventually, just outside Columbus, Connor turns his head to gaze at a billboard sitting in an empty field as they roll by. It doesn’t say anything at all but **HELL IS REAL.**

“That’s nice,” he says drolly. “Good Christian values.”

Hank looks over at him, the sign already a shrinking landmark behind them. “Are you a believer?”

Connor gives a little shrug, looking down at a tiny stain on the leg of his jeans. He’s long past due for a trip to the laundromat again. “Sometimes,” he says. “Not really.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hank asks. He keeps his eyes on the road but fishes around in the console for something until he pulls out a stick of chewing gum, and then one more that he passes over to Connor.

“Technically I guess I’m agnostic,” Connor says. “Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. It’s probably not something my mind could ever comprehend so I’m not exactly holding my breath in the meantime.”

Hank’s quiet for a long moment, working his gum in one side of his mouth. “You still keep your mind open to the possibility after all the rough shit that’s happened in your life?”

Connor sighs, lifting his head to gaze out the windshield. “Life is programmed to steamroll people like you and me whether we believe in a higher power or not,” he says. “That’s been the trend this far, at least. If I ever meet my maker I guess I’ll just thank him for the shitty ride. If I don’t, then I’ll get to die knowing all my fuck-ups weren’t anybody’s fault but mine.”

“So why even bother with optimism at all?” Hank asks. “It’s easier to just reject the whole idea altogether if you’re already looking at it that way.”

“I don’t know,” Connor says, holding up an empty hand and letting it fall back into his lap for emphasis. Except he does know, deep down, that wanting to blink out of existence had always been outweighed on the scale by something else. “Maybe there’s hope left somewhere, someday, as cliché as it sounds. I can believe in that as much as I believe in the inevitability of disappointment.”  

Hank looks thoughtful for a second before his features turn glum. “Between you and me, that sounds fucking exhausting.”

Connor laughs, head dipping as he does. “It is,” he says, pressing his fingers into his eyes. “But I don’t ever take the easy way out.”

“No, kid,” Hank says, voice full of some latent appreciation Connor wasn’t expecting to find there. “You damn sure don’t.”

From there their next destination is none other than Ashland County, the clock already pushing past two o’clock once Hank pulls off the interstate and winds up through the forest roads that lead back to Mohican State Park. It’d been advertised on roadway signs for at least the past hundred miles or more, and once they’re flanked by trees on either side of the two-lane highway Connor starts to understand the appeal.

Hank hadn’t been lying when he said the whole place looked like it was on fire. Nearly every tree along the roadway has burst into shades of rust and vermillion, some leaves golden and others blazing orange. It will wither and fall to the ground in just a few weeks, but for now Connor feels like he’s peering into a Seurat piece, all the world made with a million tiny clusters of color daubed on the canvas.

The attendant at the welcome gate comes out of his guard house and looks up at Hank sitting high in the truck. “Hey, you got a delivery or something?”

Hank raises his eyebrows and leans a little out the window to take a meaningful look back at his bobtail rig, presently without a hitch or trailer. “Not today,” he says. “We just came to see the park.”

The attendant looks surprised but passes up a folded map anyway and hits the button to lift the flimsy access gate. “You obviously can’t drive this thing on any of the bridges, but feel free to park wherever it fits,” he says. “Enjoy your stay.”

Monday afternoon finds only a small handful of other visitors meandering around, most of them sitting at the picnic area closer toward the front of the park with packed lunches and small outdoor heaters near their RVs. There’s a cluster of wooden outbuildings and a sign directing to a trail that leads toward the park ranger’s headquarters, but beyond that it’s all towering wilderness and the few narrow roads that slink back through the woods and over the water like manmade veins in Mother Nature’s inner arm.

Hank steers past the visitor lot near the front and keeps following one road back through the trees, slowly shifting up and down as they go up hills and down short inclines. Signs point the way toward a small waterfall cavern and the covered bridge, and remembering Connor’s earlier words he follows the fork in the road that’ll lead them toward the latter.

They park on the shoulder of the road a-ways back from the bridge and river and Hank hooks Sumo back up on his leash, helping him down on the driver’s side instead of subjecting poor Connor to the dog’s immediate delight at seeing wide open acreage ripe for the sniffing and rolling. Sumo barks once and then again, prancing in place and already slobbering happy drool everywhere while his tail wags high.

“We can unhook him somewhere further out of the way, let him blow off some steam,” Hank murmurs, letting Sumo lead him and Connor over to one of the footpaths. “Fulfill all his St. Bernard fantasies of rescuing wayward hikers lost in the wild.”

“Shame there’s no snow for the authentic experience,” Connor says as they wind up through the trees and foliage, boots crunching in the dry leaves as Sumo snuffles along the ground ahead, already euphoric. Connor watches his feet while he walks and just so happens to spot a telltale corner of faded green paper sticking out of the red and orange leaves like a sore thumb, heart leaping at the sight.

Hank’s already trudged a few yards ahead when he realizes Connor has fallen back, squatted down on his haunches to pluck something off the ground. He turns and strains against Sumo trying to yank him further up the trail, leash wrapped twice around his left hand. “What’d you find?”

“The twenty I lost back in Tennessee,” Connor says, holding up the slightly crumpled bill. He takes one end in either hand and snaps it for effect, laughing when Hank’s face twists up in soured dismay. “I’m _kidding_ ,” he adds after a moment, and when he’s back at Hank’s side he holds out the money without a second thought. “One man’s misfortune is another man’s gain.”

Hank glances down at the $20 bill and lets out a gruff sound. “Keep it,” he says. “I don’t need it—you found it, so it’s yours.”

“You’re insufferable,” Connor says with a sigh, though he folds the money and stuffs it in the pocket of his coat. “All the money you’ve spent on me and somehow taking a twenty’s asking too much.”

“So buy something for your damn self with it,” Hank says, nodding ahead of them as the trail widens and opens up into another clearing made for overnight camping. There’s a tiny little general store next to the communal bathrooms with a carved wooden bear standing out from, welcoming visitors inside for _gifts & goods_.

Connor follows him down the trail into the campsite area and hitches his hands up on his hips. “Like what?” he asks. “A keychain and a commemorative beer koozie? Twenty bucks probably won’t even buy a t-shirt in a place like this.”

“You don’t know that,” Hank says, settling down on a bench outside with Sumo at his feet, happily panting hot air out in the chilled afternoon. “If you’re feeling so generous, maybe go see if you can scrounge up something for lunch in there, _honey_.”

Connor stands there and stares at Hank, cheeks aflame under the mottled purple-green on his face, marveling at the sheer audacity of him—in his stupid shearling denim coat with the sun shining off the pretty silver of his hair, grinning back at Connor with one eye squinted shut and the tip of his tongue pressed against the little gap between his two front teeth.

Connor’s first thought is that he wants to hold Hank down and lick the smile right off his face, bite his way in and kiss him hard enough to leave them both bruised. His second thought is that he hopes to hell there’s air conditioning in the general store so he can escape in there long enough to cool down every square inch of his scorching skin.

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, drawing in a breath that only rattles some at the tail-end. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Inside the store he finds about as much as he was expecting—packaged snack foods, supplementary camping gear, batteries and cold drinks and coffee mugs emblazoned with the park’s logo. There’s a small refrigerated section with cold sandwiches and a few other perishables and Connor pulls a couple out, pleasantly surprised to see they’re only three bucks apiece. Temptation leads him into buying another bag of Cheetos like the ones Hank had bought that first strange night they spent together, and when he’s standing at the modest checkout counter a girl in a park jacket and beanie points first to the deep freezer by the door and then the shirts hanging on a grid rack behind her.

“End of the season sale,” she says. “All the ice cream’s gotta go before winter and we’re clearing out the old t-shirts for new stock.”

Connor sets his stuff down on the counter and goes over to peer in the freezer at the individually wrapped popsicles and ice cream bars. The sign taped to the glass window on top says everything is a quarter apiece, and he leans out the front door of the otherwise empty store to peer out at Hank.

“Chocolate or vanilla?” he asks, making Hank look up at him with a start.

“Who’s asking?”

“Ice cream.”

“Huh,” Hank says. “Vanilla I guess?”

“I knew you were soft,” Connor says primly, and then disappears back into the store to fish a few ice cream bars out of the freezer. He sets those on the counter and then pulls out his twenty dollar bill, mentally adding up everything he’s gathered so far. “Shirts are only ten bucks?”

“Yep,” the girl says, turning to look at them for herself so the long braid draped over her shoulder flips against her back. “Which one do you want?”

Connor points at one in particular, all vibrant color filling in the bold outline of Ohio against a backdrop of solid black. “That one, please.”

Outside again, Connor balances his paper grocery bag in the crook of one arm and beckons Hank and Sumo over with the other. “I want to see this bridge we’re all so excited about.”

“We?” Hank snorts, but follows alongside Connor anyway as they head further down the trail away from the campsite area. “You’re the one all hot for pioneer architecture.”

When Connor doesn’t rise to that Hank only leans over to pull back the top of the paper bag, trying to score a peek inside. “I thought you said there was ice cream,” he murmurs, looking stung when Connor swats his hand away.

“There is, but there’s no reason to spoil your lunch,” Connor says, shifting the bag to his other arm. “It’ll be fine for now, it’s barely forty degrees out here.”

By all means it’s a beautiful October day despite the cold, the sun bright and warm where it filters down through the treetops and soaks into the ground. They can hear the steady movement of the river before they see it and when the covered bridge comes into view the moment looks like a snapshot pulled from the pages of a glossy calendar more than anything real.

There aren’t any approaching cars on the path or other people milling about, so Hank and Connor walks across the long wooden trestle, letting Sumo mosey around and sniff a few beams while the structure creaks and echoes their footsteps in quiet thuds. The inside of the bridge smells like dampness and old wood but there’s a gentle sort of homesickness in it that Connor can’t quite place, and he sets his grocery bag down to lean out over the bridge’s railing and peer down at the water below.

He breathes in deep, the cold air only burning in his lungs a little bit. It occurs to him that he hasn’t had a cigarette in days, at least since the afternoon they left Reed behind in Tennessee, and while it’d be nice to have a smoke Connor isn’t exactly craving the spell of nicotine. Hank joins him a moment later, bracing his forearms on the wooden balustrade to watch the river flow.

“Nice view,” he says, idly clearing his throat. Connor glances at his profile, shadowed some now under the cooler shade of the bridge’s awning, taking in Hank’s crow’s feet and the straight line of his nose. He’d shaved earlier that morning and they’re close enough now that Connor can catch a few spicy notes of Hank’s aftershave radiating off the warmth of his neck.

“Let’s go down to the bank,” Hank says quietly, already pushing away from the railing with Sumo trotting along beside him, and all Connor can do is pick up his paper bag and follow.

They have to walk parallel to the river as they ease down the steeper incline that leads to the edge of the water. Gnarled tree roots stick up every which way and Connor nearly loses his footing once or twice, slipping through the damp leaves and grabbing onto a yearling birch to keep from eating shit outright. Hank chuckles whenever Connor stumbles and swears and finally stops to reach out and take his hand, guiding him down to the rocky shoreline where they can stand on level ground.

Connor forgets he’s still holding Hank’s hand as they walk along the stream’s trickling edge, only realizing again when he feels a warm palm squeeze his once they walk up on a cluster of flat stones warming in the sun. Hank looks a touch bit bashful behind the pink on the tips of his nose and ears but settles down anyway, finally unhooking Sumo’s leash so he can run over to splash through the shallow water.

“Guess we’ll be drying him off later,” Hank grumbles, still smiling anyway as he watches the shaggy dog leave paw prints in the damp earth on the bank. Connor eases down on the rock beside him and focuses on rummaging around his paper bag, pulling out the shirt on top and throwing it over one shoulder

Hank leans back to get a glimpse at it, one eyebrow raised. “So the shirts weren’t twenty bucks a pop after all.”

“They were on sale,” Connor says sweetly, handing Hank one of the vanilla ice cream bars before taking a chocolate one for himself. “I’m being a good tourist and contributing to the economy. Now eat your ice cream before it melts.”

Hank takes his share but first unwraps one of the extra vanilla bars and holds it out for Sumo to sniff. The dog slurps away for a few licks before he eats the whole thing in one big bite, pulling it clean off the stick. It’s mostly quiet after that, just the occasional overhead call from a songbird and the gentle sound of water flowing over smooth stones.

Connor’s shoulder brushes Hank’s every time he turns his ice cream around to lick a different side. Neither of them seems to be bothered by it, merely watching nature do as nature does in the presence of pleasant company, and Connor’s mind wanders off and away from him with Hank’s body warm and solid at his side.

He thinks of the night he’d watched Hank silently move through their darkened motel room, figure large and looming in the shadows but a newfound comfort nonetheless. It had been an entirely unforeseen sort of transition, between their first chance meeting and where they’re sitting now, but fuck all if it doesn’t feel right. And if they’d come this far in just a few days, how much further could they go? Connor wants to imagine a different take on that night in the motel, similar but twisted into a softer reality where they’re somewhere back in Michigan and when he asks Hank to come to bed, he still does, only to pull Connor into his arms and hold him there in the dark.

Hank turns and their eyes catch in the afternoon light. It makes Connor’s heart jump and snag, the frank and open blueness of Hank’s gaze peering back at him. He’s so far gone he may as well be sitting on the far side of the moon.

Connor wishes—he wishes he didn’t look like this, that they’d met in a better time and place, that he wasn’t so fucked up and Hank didn’t drink to deal with the pain of a wound so deep it would haunt him until the day he died. He wishes that life could give him this one thing he never even knew he wanted or needed until it literally reached down and plucked him out of the rain to help wipe the blood out of his eyes.

He wishes he’d done this a whole lot sooner.

“Hey, let me have a taste,” Connor says, still caught in the gravitational pull of the look Hank’s giving him, and instead of leaning over to bite into the forgotten ice cream bar steadily melting in Hank’s hand he goes a little further and doesn’t stop until their lips are brushing together amidst the gentle scratch of Hank’s beard, sweet and faintly sticky but so much warmer than the autumn day all around them.

Hank doesn’t move, lips parted even when Connor pulls back an inch or two with his eyes still closed. Connor can hear his blood pounding in his ears, afraid to even breathe, waiting for whatever fallout he deserves for ruining the few scraps of goodness they had before he decided to break it.

“Connor,” Hank says after a long moment, deep voice dangerously close to Connor’s cheek. “Tell me that just wasn’t because you wanted a taste of this goddamn ice cream.”

“It wasn’t,” Connor whispers, still afraid to open his eyes.

“Thank fuck,” Hank sighs, and drops his ice cream in the dirt before taking Connor’s face between both hands and crushing their mouths together in another kiss.

Connor weakly braces his hands against Hank’s chest and nearly moans right then and there against his lips, the relief is so immediate and sweet. Hank’s hands are gentle despite their roughness, thumbs resting near the corners of Connor’s eyes while he holds him in place and pushes his way into the seam of Connor’s mouth for a better taste of his own. Kissing Hank is unlike anything Connor’s ever done before but it feels as natural as drawing his next breath.

When they break apart Connor finally opens his eyes and blinks fast, finding himself staring into the blown-wide darkness of Hank’s pupils. He lets out a breathy little laugh and dips his head, sending his curls askew, and only leans in when Hank pulls him closer to press another kiss against his temple.

“You alright?” Hank asks, laughing some himself—but it’s good laughter, warm and light, and Connor’s never been so fucking twitterpated. “You’re lookin’ a little dizzy.”

“You’re not _that_ good,” Connor says, smiling when he feels Hank’s laugh rumble between them. Sumo bounds back over to them from the water and starts licking Connor’s foot, and when they look down they find the remnants of his chocolate ice cream slowly melting right where it fell on his left boot.

“Damn,” Hank says, but the moment snaps Connor out of whatever rose-tinted haze he’d been drifting in.

“Is this okay?” he asks quickly, pulling back enough to find Hank’s eyes again. “Are we—you’re not upset or anything, are you?”

Hank tries to laugh, the sound of it mostly winded. “Upset?” he asks. “Do I look upset to you?”

Connor sags where he sits, reaching up to push a shaky hand through his hair. “I wanted to kiss you up there but didn’t want to do it on that stupid fucking bridge.”

“Good call,” Hank tells him, bracing his fingers around Connor’s jaw as he leans in closer again. “None of that romcom shit.”

 

* * *

 

The sandwiches and cheese puffs get eaten, eventually, sometime later in the expanse of endless afternoon. Sumo soaks himself clear up to his chest in the cold river current and finds an empty fox den, his two shining achievements of the day after wolfing down three half-melted ice cream bars. They visit the park’s natural cavern and Hank watches Connor instead of watching the waterfall.

He’s gone and gotten himself royally fucked, but maybe he doesn’t care. At least not right now, not when Connor’s practically glowing and keeps giving him shy looks from the corner of his eye like a schoolboy with a crush, biting into his bottom lip and doing that demure thing with his lashes that Hank can barely resist.

On second thought—holy _shit_ , he’s fucking terrified.

Sure, there’d been a few flings since Jennifer left. Few quick fucks here and there, plus a couple sad ones Hank doesn’t like to think back on too often. But the number of nights he’s spent alone with only his dog for company—in limbo on the road and tucked into the little nook in the back of his sleeper—far outnumbers the rest of it.

He wonders if he knows how to do this anymore and then wonders if he ever did at all. More than that, he doesn’t know if he trusts himself not to screw it all up, considering this is the first time in his 53 years of living that some supple young thing twenty years his junior with two black eyes and a sassy mouth has shown any remote interest in him whatsoever.

It’s a lot to think about. Too much to think about, if Hank’s being honest with himself. But damn if it hadn’t been easy, letting Connor kiss him and then just kissing right back like they’d been doing it for years. He hadn’t expected to ever feel that way again—drawn right in to something new, something lively and precious, something worth protecting and holding close.

Funny, how all of those things are Connor.

“Oh, we’ll make it back to Detroit with daylight to spare,” Connor says in a poor imitation of Hank’s voice as they walk back from the waterfall cavern, the day gone dim in the wake of late afternoon. “Only be here for an hour or two tops.”

Hank narrows his eyes and knocks the toe of his boot against Connor’s. “Maybe that’d still be the case if somebody hadn’t decided to plant one on me.”

“Perhaps it would,” Connor says sweetly, not the least bit remorseful, and then reaches ahead to try and pluck some dead leaf bits out of Sumo’s fur as they walk. The dog has burrs stuck in his tail that Connor’s been trying to tease out for an hour or more, huffing and swearing softly in frustration every time they get knotted up tighter.

When they make it back to the truck the sun has already dipped below the tree line and started to soak everything in Mohican with diluted marigold light. Hank busies himself with doing a quick walk-around to check his tires, and when he’s done and pocketing the pressure gauge he saunters around to find Connor leaning against the grill at the front with Sumo, the two of them lit up golden and looking off into the distance at nothing much in particular.

He takes his phone out and snaps a picture before Connor has time to notice.

“What was that for?” Connor asks, even though the corner of his mouth is playing up into a tiny smile on the side with the healing split.

“Dunno,” Hank says with a sniff, dropping his phone back into his pocket. _You look handsome. I want to remember this. Maybe I’m just a sentimental old fucking bastard._ “Lighting’s nice this time of day.”

“You don’t have a lot of pictures on there,” Connor says casually, and then pales some when he realizes. “Shit.”

Hank laughs, unbothered. “Well now I’ve got one more, don’t I?” he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the grill beside Connor.

He watches him and wonders what he’s supposed to make of all this. The energy between them has changed, hushed but thrumming like a plucked harp string, and he feels a lot like a fumbling high school freshman who doesn’t know what to do with his fucking hands. Slid hard into first base but forget how the hell to run and steal second.

“We don’t have to go back to Detroit tonight,” Connor says after a moment, still looking elsewhere. His Adam’s apple wavers in his throat and Hank’s suddenly all too curious to find out what that soft skin tastes like under the flat of his tongue.

“We don’t?” Hank asks, voice a touch more gravelly than usual.

“Could stay here for the night,” Connor says, tipping his head in the general direction of the campsite they’d passed earlier. “It’s free parking and the camp showers can’t be any worse than a truck stop.”

It’d take them about three solid hours to reach Detroit at this point, completely within the realms of doable by an remarkably wide margin, and Christ knows Hank would do some heinous things to fall face-down in the softness of his own bed and not move again for at least twelve hours.

Lax as he is to admit it, seems like he’d do just a few more heinous things to spend another night with Connor.

“You know what?” he says with a shrug, pushing off the truck to reach for his keys. “Why not? We came this far, I’m dead dog tired and there’s sure as shit nobody waiting on me back home in an empty house.”

That last part seems to hang suspended in the air, caught in the breeze, but neither of them are quite ready to reach out and touch it.

“Come on,” Connor says, lightly brushing the back of Hank’s hand with two fingers as he moves by on his way to the passenger side door. “Let’s see if there are any good spots left.”

  


 

It’s already dark when Connor emerges from the shower house, wearing nothing more than the new t-shirt and a clean pair of Hank’s boxers under his flannel coat. He shivers against the cold and tromps along is his boots, trying not to trip on the untied laces as he heads back to where they parked the rig for the night. The shampoo dispenser in the narrow shower stall had spit out foamy pink soap that cut through grime like it was hospital grade, and the balmy antiseptic smell never fails to take Connor back to the morning he woke up in a cold white room and learned both his parents were dead.

The memory doesn’t cut him as deeply as it used to, but funny to think how something as simple as soap hundreds of miles from home and twenty years after the fact can trigger a thought in the brain. He wonders if Hank was drawn back into something similar and walks faster to get back to the truck, breath gently clouding on the air as he goes.

Hank had showered first and stayed behind with Sumo, sitting up in the bunk now with his glasses on his nose and the reading light on as he turns pages in a book. Connor catches a glimpse of the cover as he climbs back up into the truck and locks the door behind him, only able to decipher that it’s a Dean Koontz novel before his eye is drawn to two of the tiny Wild Turkey shooter bottles sitting empty on the shelf in Hank’s sleeper closet.

Part of Connor wants to prod, but the other part of him is freezing and wants to wrap up in the warmth of a blanket before he shivers out of his boots. He shrugs out of his coat anyway and drapes it over the back of the seat and then takes the liberty of pulling the curtains over the windows, sealing them all into the shadowed warmth of the cab. There’s only one small pane of glass left uncovered, a tiny port window above the head of Hank’s bunk.

“We could’ve had a romantic drink,” Connor says with a nod toward the little bottles, easing himself down on the edge of the bed by Hank’s knees. The déjà vu he gets thinking back on the night he iced and wrapped Hank’s hand is so dizzying he has to brace a hand on the bed to keep from tipping into it.

Hank blinks over the tops of his glasses before pushing them up on his head and setting his book aside. “Liquid courage,” he mumbles, gaze wavering apprehensively on Connor. He clears his throat, one foot arching in a small stretch at the other end of the bunk. Sumo’s snoring in his bed on the floor, so worn out he didn’t even budge when the truck door opened. “Are you cold?”

“Uh, yeah, a little,” Connor says, and when Hank wordlessly scoots over further against the wall of the sleeper cab to make room Connor only gets up and tucks himself into the warm spot he left behind. He pulls the blanket up and hunkers down into the pillow, holding his breath when Hank braces an arm between them to lean over him and reach up to click off the reading light.

The cab goes dark save for the faint stream of moonlight coming in from the tiny port window above the bed. It pools in the blankets between their legs, soft and silver. Connor shifts his legs under the covers and for a split moment it looks like they’re moving under water.

Hank fluffs the second pillow into submission before letting his head fall into it, heaving out a big breath that Connor feels against his shoulder. He closes his eyes, briefly, and wishes he could tuck himself up under Hank and stay warm there until spring’s first thaw, but purely imagining Hank’s weight pressing down on his body warms Connor up a lot faster than he thought it would.

“I had a dream a couple nights ago,” Hank says suddenly.  “Kinda—kinda weird thing, you know? I keep showing up in my grandad’s old apple orchard before he sold it off and…Cole is there. Just playing around and being himself, doing the shit kids do. Before he got sick, anyway.”

Connor keeps listening, quiet, as Hank thumbs across his beard and blows out a sigh. “It almost feels real sometimes,” he says. “But then you were there, too.”

That makes Connor’s blood beat faster, burning heat spreading across his face. “Me?” he asks, voice gathered somewhere in the back of his throat.

“Yeah,” Hank says, laughing a little breathlessly. “Uh, well, you looked different—better. Not so beat up, I guess.”

When Connor’s face falls in the dim light Hank looks genuinely wounded. “You know I’m not just saying that to rub anything in or be an asshole,” he tries, struggling to find the right words. “I just thought—it made me think I want you to stick around once we get back to Detroit.”

Connor blinks at him, watching. Waiting for something. Anything.

Hank’s hand comes up carefully, then, so he can press the pad of his middle finger against the fresh scar running through Connor’s eyebrow. Connor closes his eyes and turns his face into it, trying to keep his breathing held even despite the hammering in his chest.

“So I can see whether I had it right or not in the dream,” Hank says finally, shifting his hand so his thumb rests on the swell of Connor’s bottom lip. “But mostly so I can keep seeing…you.”

Connor opens his eyes again the barest bit, hidden mostly under the weight of his lashes. He sees Hank looking back at him and wonders if this is real, if he heard right, if he fell somewhere back in the shower and cracked his head on the tile floor.

“Do you think this is another dream?” he asks, lips skimming the gentle thumb at his mouth.

Hank swears low under his breath and laughs, moving his hand around to cup Connor’s face. “Christ, I fucking hope not.”

“Then prove it,” Connor tells him, heart racing itself ragged, and when Hank’s eyes flick back down to his mouth Connor doesn’t waste any time waiting for him to make the first move. They’re still lying side by side but Connor puts a palm against Hank’s shoulder and pushes him flat on his back, twisting around so he can get a knee in the bed and sprawl himself across Hank’s chest to come back in and kiss him.

Their noses knock together enough that Connor’s eyes water but he doesn’t stop, pulling a leg up so his groin is pressed tight against the outer groove of Hank’s thigh. He ruts a little there, testing with a tiny roll of his hips, and it feels so good that he gasps against Hank’s mouth.

“Easy now,” Hank growls, one big hand coming around to settle on the curve of Connor’s ass, squeezing. “You sure you want to do this here?”

Connor would do this in a back alley dumpster if Hank was the one offering, but he laughs, the sound of it strained to his own ears. “I’m not sure we have too many other options right now,” he says, cock twitching in his boxers against the solid heat underneath him.

“I know that, smartass,” Hank says, all of it pure warmth and affection. “I just—I don’t want this to be one more memory of some john getting his good time in the back of a rig.”

Connor thinks he’d almost be mad if Hank didn’t sound so fucking sincere about it, and when their eyes meet again in the pale light he pauses, one palm splayed over Hank’s chest.

“But I’m not with a john,” he says, quiet. “I’m with you.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Hank says, reaching up to pass his free hand over his eyes. “I know that, Connor. I know, but—”

A different thought flashes through Connor’s mind, driving a needle of fear right through his heart.

“I’m clean,” he says, blinking fast even though it’s the truth. “Anytime I—anytime there was ever anything like that I used protection, and it didn’t happen often, but if you need me to get tested I’ll—”

Hank shakes his head, eyes closed. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says. “I believe you.” He draws in a deep breath, a little frayed at the edges, and tries to laugh. “Maybe I just thought you deserved—somewhere better, I mean.”

Connor lets his head drop against Hank’s shoulder, all but collapsed there. “Where then, Mr. Anderson,” he murmurs against the soft cotton of Hank’s undershirt, “would you like to fuck me?”

“Well,” Hank says, voice gone tight. “If you’d let me, I was thinking about taking you home.”

Connor looks back up at him and sees the truth of it right there written all over Hank’s face. It makes his eyes burn some again, but not from pain this time.

“We can—we can do that,” he says, dizzy with the notion, and brimming with far too many thoughts and emotions to handle in this singular moment. “And in the meantime?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Hank says, turning over on his side and taking Connor with him. Their mouths meet in another crooked kiss and when he hooks a thumb in the waistband of Connor’s shorts and yanks them down, all Connor can do is bow into the welcoming bulk of his body and hang on for the ride.

Hank’s hand wraps around his cock and Connor honest-to-God mewls like a wildcat, already flushed from his cheeks to his sternum and aching for more. He reaches down between them to feel around for the front of Hank’s boxers and his eyes widen when he gets a hand around the heavy girth of him through the fabric.

“ _Oh_ ,” Connor gasps, just as Hank’s hand moves down there to join him. Hank shoves his own boxers out of the way and then widens the spread of his thighs, pushing closer until Connor’s smaller groin is wedged in flush against him. Their cocks brush where they’re caught between their bellies and the silken heat of it makes Connor see stars.

“Hank,” he says, hands fisting wherever they can make purchase behind Hank’s neck and in the blankets. “Hank, I—”

“I’m right here,” Hank murmurs, and with that he wraps a hand around both their cocks and starts stroking them together, all of it warm chafe at first until his thumb swipes across Connor’s flushed tip on the upstroke and he bucks up further into Hank’s grip.

It was never destined to last forever, and Connor whines and grinds and ruts along the underside of Hank’s cock where they’re pressed together, biting into his lip and swearing until he gasps and comes all over Hank’s hand. The new bloom of warm wetness doesn’t stop them, though, and Hank keeps fisting himself alongside Connor’s softening and sensitive cock until his hips jerk forward in a primal kind of thrust and he loses himself all between their quivering bellies.

“Fuck,” Hank says, breathing a little hard, and Connor nods, panting a damp spot into the pillow under his mouth. They’re both covered in jizz and starting to sweat, the blanket tangled up around their knees and Hank’s hip starting to ache from where he’d crammed Connor’s bonier pelvis up underneath it.

“At least I’m not cold anymore,” Connor says, a giddy smile spreading across his face, and Hank snorts but leans in to kiss him, lips landing somewhere next to his nose. He shifts around and tries to shimmy back into his boxers without getting the mess anywhere else, and as soon as he gets up Connor almost counts the seconds until he comes back.

“Guess we’re sleeping on a towel,” Hank grunts, going to pull one out of the shelf above his closet. He wipes up with an old t-shirt and then folds it in half before passing it over to Connor, and when they’re done he stuffs that in the laundry bag and then urges Connor to scoot further into the bunk this time.

Hank spreads the towel over the wet spot and climbs into bed, settling down on his back with a content sigh. They’re both cooled down and loose-limbed now, and when he opens an arm Connor curls right up against his side. Sumo is still fast asleep in his bed on the floor, paws twitching in midair as he dreams.  

Connor closes his eyes, content to do nothing at all for the moment but be held and let himself sink into unconsciousness while he listens to the steady rhythm of Hank’s gentle breathing. He wonders if they should talk, if there’s anything more that needs saying, and then decides that even if there was there’s no reason at all it can’t wait until morning.  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I return at last! Sorry for the skip on ye olde unofficial posting schedule, I finished my Big Bang fic and then spent a week trying to get back into the groove again. Thanks for being so patient and holding the line in the meantime :)
> 
> Some fun things to look at: the [covered bridge](https://www.naturallyamazing.com/americasparks/19368.jpg) at Mohican State Park, the [HELL IS REAL](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYa0J8rW4AEQL-g.jpg) sign, and also Connor's [new t-shirt](https://images.lookhuman.com/render/standard/6141658086406406/3600-black-z1-t-ohio-is-for-lovers.jpg)


	9. Chapter 9

All things said and done, they rest better than they have in a long time.

Connor wakes first, warm and eyes gritty with good sleep, and doesn’t move at first. There’s not another body pressed against him anymore but he senses a presence behind him in the bunk, sure and familiar. When he rolls over Hank cracks open an eye to look at him, hair still mussed and flat on one side from sleeping with his face in the pillow. It looks like he’s been awake a little while longer than Connor, but not by much.

“You’re still here,” Connor says. It’s not an accusation or a cutting remark, only an observation made in the pale light coming in through the little porthole window. Up this close he can make out the faintest smattering of sun freckles at Hank’s temples and on the bridge of his nose, unseen until this very moment.

“You expecting me to be somewhere else?” Hank asks, stretching with a satisfied grunt and a dull pop in his shoulder joint. He settles back down and props an elbow up in his pillow, face held in hand. “You’re blocking the way out, and this is my truck.”

Connor stiffens even if there’s no real need to, maybe only in light of his own paranoia.

“I thought you might—I don’t know,” he says, and then babbles out the rest when Hank only arches an eyebrow and waits. “Traditionally the way this would go is you’d have big gay crisis and tell me you’re too straight for this, call me a couple choice words to reestablish your unwavering masculinity, and kick me out of the truck on the side of the road without my coat.”

“You know,” Connor finishes. “The usual fare with my luck.”

Hank blinks slowly and then drags a hand down his face with a groan. “Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Con,” he says. “Luckily I got past my big gay crisis probably before you were even out of diapers, and on top of that there doesn’t seem to be anything typical about this thing between you and me.”  

His hand drops back into the blankets between them as something new suddenly dawns on his face. “Oh shit,” he says, looking stricken. “I’m old as fuck.”

“Oh no,” Connor says sternly, reaching up to thump Hank’s covered hip with the flat of his hand. “Don’t you start with that.”

“ _Me?_ ” Hank says, incredulous. “You’re the one who woke up expecting me to have ditched you already!”

Connor screws his mouth up at that, poised thoughtful, and then lets it unfurl into a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry,” he says, and then scooches closer to snuggle back up against Hank so his words are muffled against his shoulder. “That was all theoretical anxiety talking. I know you wouldn’t do something like that after—everything we’ve been through.”

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t,” Hank says gruffly, but reaches up to pet Connor’s head anyway, fingers parting through the frizzy waves from where they’d rutted in bed while Connor’s hair was still damp the night before. “Can you believe it’s only been…what, five days?”

“No,” Connor murmurs, head still bowed against Hank’s shoulder. “And don’t say that like it’s a justification for anything. The world was built in only seven, depending on who you ask.”

Hank only makes a skeptical _hmph_ sound in the back of his throat, fingertips gone to rest at the base of Connor’s skull where they gently scritch through the soft hair there, all of it grown overlong now. Connor breathes deep and steady, gone boneless under his touch, and if he was a cat Hank knows he’d be purring like a motor.

He wants to let himself enjoy this for as long as it lasts, for however long he’s lucky.

Sumo, on the other hand, has other ideas for this morning.

The St. Bernard only gives a little whine of warning and a few thumps of his tail thwacking against the back of the seat before he jumps up into the bunk, the springs groaning under his added weight. He flops over across Connor’s legs and pushes himself further up the bed in a languid stretch, snuffling through the blankets until he finds a bare arm to lick.

_Boof!_ Sumo barks, still trying to dig them out from under the covers.

“Get outta here, you crazy mutt,” Hank says with a laugh, making a face at the slobber coating the hair on the back of his forearm. He throws the blanket back and shoos Sumo off the bed, sliding out from under Connor with a little less finesse than he’d hoped. “Down, get down, we’re fucking coming.”

Connor yawns wide and sits up to swing his legs out of bed, toes curling against the cold floor while he watches Hank stuff his feet into his boots and shoulder into his coat.

“Walk of shame,” Hank mutters to himself before throwing Connor a wink, climbing down out of the truck into the frosty morning in his boxers. He calls Sumo and then clips his leash on, voice carrying up to Connor. “Hang tight, we’ll be back in a few.”

When they’re gone and Connor can only hear the muffled timbre of Hank’s voice as he and Sumo walk further from the truck, he stays sitting on the edge of the bunk, momentarily mystified. Turns, slowly, and looks at the folded towel Hank had laid out on the bottom sheet the night before. Peers up into the closet and finds the two empty shooters of Wild Turkey Hank had downed while Connor was in the shower, then wonders if he’d known what was coming far enough in advance to try and shave the edge off.

He’d been so goddamn sweet, though. Kind and selfless in the face of Connor’s derelict neediness, taking them both in hand and calmly leading the way. The memory is visceral but padded with enough dreamlike softness that Connor is tempted to question whether it’d really happened at all.

But it had. It’d been wonderfully, mind-numbingly real, and they’re only a stone’s throw from Detroit now. Caught in the last spoke of the journey but not yet borne back into the final destination. And what was it Hank had said to him? _I was thinking about taking you—_

“Home,” Connor says to himself, aloud, alone in the empty sleeper cab. He smiles and ducks his head even though nobody’s watching, feeling both dumbstruck and unspeakably happy, chin cradled in the heel of his hand.

He has nothing left in the world but half his name and whatever he could probably carry in two paper grocery bags, but home, even as nothing more than a word and a promise, feels like an endless reward. An old life traded for a new one, the first one razed to the ground and the second poking up through the ashes like a timid green sprout of life.

Connor wonders if he’ll ruin this, too. If it’s all too good to be true, if everything will come crashing down because he had the hubris to fly too close to a source of warmth when he was cold.

And then there’s the sound of two figures trudging back to the truck through the frostbitten campsite, clear as a bell. A troubled but good man and his dog—nothing more, nothing less. Is it what he’d asked for? Is it what ten-year-old Connor thought he’d find when he imagined some faceless hero coming to take him away from everything awful in the world? No. The world is still full of awful things, and nobody can truly fight Connor’s battles for him. All this hadn’t been what he planned for, but maybe it’d been what he needed.

Sumo bounds up into the truck, dew-damp paws sliding some on the steps, and lunges for Connor so they both topple back on the bed. Hank hauls himself back in a second later with Sumo’s leash looped around his elbow, leaning there in the narrow aisle between the seats with a little smile playing around his mouth.

“C’mon, you big fuckin’ beast,” he says warmly, getting the dog by the collar and pulling him back when Connor’s had enough slobbery kisses. “He’s already awake.”

Connor laughs and stands, grabbing his flannel coat off the back of the passenger seat as he heads toward the front of the truck. He slides past Hank’s bulk so the two of them are wedged between the sets, groins pushed together, and the contact even through their clothes makes Connor’s pulse spike and buzz in his veins.

“Good morning,” he tells Hank, pressing a kiss against the silver stubble on the high part of Hank’s cheek.

Hank colors a little bit and swats his ass as Connor heads outside to head for the camp bathroom.

“Coffee when you get back,” he says.

“Coffee when I get back,” Connor agrees, and refocuses on the mindful act of being thankful.

  
  
  


They’re fueling up with diesel at a service station an hour outside Detroit city limits when Hank looks up from the glass cleaner bottle he’d just stuffed back in his toolbox, face bright with whiskey-warmth and revelation, and says, “You weren’t sweet on Richard, you were sweet on _me_.”

Connor lets out a laugh like a startled bird from where he’s sitting on the running board, halfway into the last honey bun in the box. He licks the edge of his thumb and flushes some, suddenly busy with messing with the laces on his right boot. “Took you long enough to muddle that one out.”

“Jesus, kid,” Hank says, shaking his head like he can’t believe it. “I mean, take one look at Rich and then take a good long look at me. He’s a handsome motherfucker and I’m—Christ, I don’t even know. Can you blame me for not putting two and two together?”

Connor rests his hand and remaining honey bun against his knee, tipping his head back to look at Hank. “I’m not attracted to Richard,” he says plainly. “He reminds me—listen, there’s no easy or believable way to say this, but when I don’t look like a homeless whipping post I tend to clean up pretty well. You’re going to laugh, but Richard reminds me of…me.”

Hank stares long and hard at Connor’s face, almost as if he’s trying to see through the green bruising and tiny scars. He doesn’t laugh, but he does reach up and stroke his beard while he’s suspended in thought. The ticker on the diesel pump keeps on going behind him and then shuts off with a jolt and hiss.

“You know,” he says after a moment, “you might be right— _maybe_. But only if I was blackout drunk and squinted hard enough. The hair color’s the same, at least.”

Connor makes a disapproving sound in the back of his throat and takes another vicious bite of honey bun.

“Richard’s just—” Hank makes an elusive gesture with his hand, turning it midair. “He’s a lot different from you. Aloof. Serious. Nice enough at work, but guys like that eat their salads without any dressing and squeegee the whole fucking shower every time they wash their balls.”  

“So you’re attracted to hot messes and people without their lives in order instead, right?” Connor asks, only halfway joking around a mouthful of pastry. “Maybe your savior complex is showing.”  

Hank raises both brows at that, gazing down at Connor as he hoists the diesel pump back on the hook. “Oh yeah?” he muses. “Did you need saving?”

Connor freezes and Hank’s expression goes slack with abrupt embarrassment. Connor knows the whole answer is written across his own face, may as well be etched into a stone tablet. The truth hangs between them but that doesn’t make it any easier to admit to.

“Forget I said that,” Hank mutters, waving him off while he screws the fuel tank cover back on. “I like you because you’re you, Connor. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s a two-way street, you know,” Connor says, making himself catch Hank’s eye. “I’m not trying to fill any cookie cutter shapes in my life.”

Hank sighs, long-suffering, but bows his head in assent. Another rig pulls into the station lot and steers toward the fuel pump, and that means it’s time for them to go. “We keep having these Oscar monologues in the weirdest fucking places,” he says.

“Maybe they’ll make a movie about us one day,” Connor says, dimples deepening on both cheeks when Hank swears under his breath and reaches out to pull him up from the running board. “Somebody could write a book.”

“We’re probably not interesting enough for that, honey,” Hank tells him, not a touch of irony in it, and that’s enough to keep Connor smiling all the way back to Michigan.  
  


  
* * *  
  
  


The first familiar pinch of skyline on the horizon makes Connor’s stomach coil in his gut, limbs thrumming with some mixture of relief and phantom anticipation. It’s like the long lead-up to that first big drop on a rollercoaster, except reversed, where he’s been dropping in an endless freefall for months and finally stepped onto solid ground again. Sea legs back in the native homeland, wobbly and grateful as a newborn lamb.

He catches sight of the great arching Labor Legacy monument as Hank steers down Jefferson Avenue on the way to the freight center and almost fucking cries. Holds it back only because he feels stupidly confused by a rush of emotion he wasn’t expecting, and then because Hank nervously clears his throat and says, “I know we’re passing the warehouse here in a minute, but if you’d rather go somewhere else first instead of talking to Jeff—”

“No, I should take care of business as soon as possible,” Connor says, looking straight ahead. “I need a new job more than I need anything.” He blinks after a moment, looking dazed, and then swears when a new wave of dread washes over him. “Oh my God, I don’t even have a fucking resume.”

Hank laughs a little bit, sliding Connor a sideways look. “I wouldn’t worry so much about the resume yet—more like getting a shower and a haircut, maybe a new shirt that doesn’t have the gay pride flag on it, y’know.” His eyes briefly flicker down to the rainbow-filled state of Ohio peeking out from under Connor’s coat but shine with mirth all the same. “Jeff’s an open-minded guy but the man adheres to a certain level of old school professionalism when and where he can.”

Connor blows out a breath past his teeth but nods, hands smoothing down his thighs. “You’re right, I need to pull myself together.” He barks out a sudden laugh so hard it makes Sumo startle and sit up in the back. “I just remembered I still don’t know shit about rigs.”

“All the more reason to take it easy and sit on this a couple days,” Hank says with some emphasis, merging into the left-hand turning lane and popping on his signal. “I know you’re ready to get the ball rolling but I was hoping we’d be able to get out on a few back roads and drive some first, take a more in-depth tour around all the truck’s bells and whistles, that kinda thing.”

“Yeah, that’d be for the best,” Connor says, deflating some while he watches Detroit go about its business out the window. “Sometimes I tend to—get ahead of myself.”

“I know,” Hank says, making an amused sound low in his chest. “So damn eager.”

Connor’s expression narrows, all prior embarrassment melting away even though the high points of his cheeks are still warm. “When you say it like that it makes you sound like a dirty old man.”

Hank grins and the light finally turns green, routing them away from the harbor and up a bustling metropolitan street. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I am?”

“I think you’ve proved as much already,” Connor says dryly, even though a tiny shiver skitters up his spine when he thinks back to the night before.

“Hmm,” Hank hums, pleasantly enough, and starts driving out toward the sprawl of Detroit’s inner suburbia. “Maybe that was just a preview.”

Connor thinks he’s traveled this road a few times, come and gone on his way through the city on old business or errands. New-age coffee shops and specialty stores gradually give way to renovated apartment buildings and warehouse lofts, and from there the first few private mailboxes and wrought iron fences start cropping up on the roadside.

“You live out here?” Connor asks, watching a wiry terrier chase dead leaves around its front yard as they pass by.

“I do,” Hank says, pointing further up the street where the houses start getting smaller and the yards a little less manicured. “Just a few blocks past the good ol’ gentrification line.”

That startles a laugh out of Connor, the candid frankness in Hank’s voice something unexpected. “Is that some big political statement?”  

“Just the truth,” Hank says with a shrug. “Me and Sumo don’t need anything fancy when it’s just the two of us. Been kinda weird, watching the neighborhood get gussied up over the past couple years. Seems like every time I come back from a long haul there’s some new hippie place selling handmade soap or goddamn crystals up the street when just a few blocks over you got kids outside playing in the gutters without their coats on.”

Connor thinks of the two homes he grew up in, his parents’ sturdy ranch house outside the city limits and Amanda’s mid-century stone behemoth overlooking her sprawling rose garden. By all means he was one of the more privileged children of Detroit proper growing up, but it’d never been anything that really came to light in his mind until well after he was grown. Despite having a warm bed and plenty of clothes, somehow the longest stretches of his adolescence had still felt like a quiet fight for survival.

It’s hard, trying to imagine what Hank’s home may look like after only seeing the inside of the truck. Connor watches each house come and go, wondering if the next might be the one they’re aiming for, trying to picture Hank fumbling for his keys and opening the front door to any one of them. Another block passes without a winner and then Connor finally gets a hint when they cruise under an overpass and Sumo sits bolt-upright in the back, whining and pawing while he tries to climb over Connor and press his face up against the passenger window.

“Sumo knows where we are,” Hank says, air breaks hissing as he slows the truck, and half a block later he’s pulling into the mostly-empty driveway of a single story house with a tarp-covered car parked in front of the garage. It’s modest but neat, painted a neutral slate grey. Connor notices right away that Hank’s house is the only one on this side of the street not at least sparsely decorated for Halloween. No jack-o’-lanterns or corn husk scarecrows in sight.

He smiles softly anyway, pressing both palms flat against the denim on his thighs to hide the faint tremble there.

Hank pulls his keys out of the ignition and they sit in silence for a few beats, the truck already beginning to settle and tick under the hood while cold air hits the engine. An open door lets Sumo bound out into the small yard and then Hank is slowly thawing out enough to follow him, thumping the outside of his door with a broad palm.

“Well, we made it,” he says, laughing a little breathlessly like he can’t quite believe it himself despite having made this journey a thousand times before. “Come on in, I’ll head back out and get the laundry and shit after while.”

Connor follows Hank up to the low stoop and waits while he unlocks the door with one of the keys hanging off his white rabbit foot charm. In any other life as any other person he’d at least have a duffel bag or small backpack to bring inside, but here and now all Connor has to carry into the house is himself.

The door swings open and Hank lets Sumo in before stepping aside, wordlessly urging Connor to go first. Within two steps the smell hits him right away, always one of the first things noticed about a new environment. It’s a little musty with a slight touch of dog dander and an open window may do it some good, but the rest is already familiar. Connor’s been pressing his nose into it in Hank’s clothes for days.

“It’s not much to look at,” Hank mutters, bending at the waist to gather up the mess of bills and junk fliers that had come in through the mail slot while he was away. He nudges the door shut with his boot and drops the mail off on the little table in the foyer with his keys, standing there looking halfway hapless with his hands suddenly empty. “But it’s home.”

Home, as far as Connor can tell, is modest clutter on the kitchen table and counters and a few pairs of Hank’s shoes tucked by the front door. A plain but cushy sofa and recliner and a flat screen TV on the wall, most of the other furniture more bare-bones functional than anything decorative. There’s a bookshelf partway filled with novels and a map on the far wall with pushpins stuck in nearly every state in the lower 48. Connor feels the corner of his mouth twitch up when he sees it, walking over to touch a few of the pins in Louisiana, Oregon, and even Rhode Island.

Connor doesn’t even realize he’s been quiet this whole time until Hank’s standing at his shoulder, looking over the map himself. He clears his throat, reaching up to palm the back of his neck; either nervous or bashful, Connor’s still trying to decide.

“Good to have a visual spread out, y’know?” Hank says, pressing two fingers to one corner of the map where it’s beginning to curl up. “Keeps me grounded sometimes.”

“I love it,” Connor says, and means it. “More people should look back on where they’ve been and where they’re headed next. It’s easy to take the rest of the world for granted.”

Hank makes a noncommittal sound at that but breezes away, disappearing somewhere down the hallway. “Let me get the heat cranked back up in here, it’s fucking freezing.”

Sumo has already plopped himself down in his big bed by the radiator, patiently waiting for the heater to kick back on. He watches Connor with his droopy, happy eyes, completely guileless about the fact that this is the first time Connor’s ever been here, and then turns his attention back to a chewed rope toy nestled between his front paws.

Connor looks around the living room but feels like he’s penned in there, still caught in that invisible web as a newfangled houseguest where the rest of the rooms remain off-limits. It’s a strange feeling, considering the tight quarters he and Hank have already been sharing, and instead of wandering any further he shrugs out of his coat and sits down on one side of the sofa with his hands in his lap, listening to Hank bustle around the kitchen.

“Uh, don’t know how much there is to eat,” he says, voice slightly muffled from inside the pantry cabinet. Connor listens as the refrigerator opens, closes, and then opens again as if something would’ve miraculously appeared there in the two seconds it was shut. Glass bottles clatter in the sink, at least three or four strong. “Probably have to go to the store later this afternoon, pick the essentials up.”

Connor looks to his left and sees a picture frame turned face down on the end table. When he tips it upright again, fingerprints smudging some of the dust on the glass, he finds Cole Anderson smiling back at him. Big hazel eyes and that telltale gap between his teeth, probably no older than six or seven. Connor sets the photo back down and wipes his fingers across the knee of his pants.  
  
“Do you like tomato soup?” Hank’s voice chimes back in from the kitchen. “I mean, it’s the canned shit, but that never hurt anyb—”

“Hank,” Connor says, one syllable winging across the living room into the kitchen. Hank’s rummaging cuts short and Connor listens to the tiny _clink_ of a tin can being set down on the countertop.

“What?”

“Come over here.” Connor swallows dryly, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Please.”  

A few seconds pass and Hank pokes his head through the kitchen doorway, brow drawn and creased. “Are you okay?”

Connor gazes back at him, eyes wavering. “Are you?”

Hank laughs hoarsely, dragging a palm over his face so it’s pressed flat against his nose and mouth. But his shoulders droop and he walks back into the living room, dropping down on the ottoman across from Connor so their knees are barely brushing.

“Nerves,” Hank says, not quite meeting Connor’s eye when he says it. “I don’t—Christ, you already know nobody ever comes around here. I’m sorry it’s a fuckin’ mess.”

“It’s not,” Connor says. His next breath comes out like a slashed tire, wringing out his lungs. “Hank—I. What are we…doing here?”

Hank’s eyes flicker back up at that, the blue there gone sharp. “What do you mean?”

Connor pushes his hands between his knees and stares at them, mouth pressed into a thin line. His hair flops over against his forehead and Hank was right—he needs a fucking haircut before he ventures out into the real world again. But right now, in this moment, that’s the least of his worries.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Connor says roughly, almost a whisper. “As if that weren’t painfully obvious already. But I don’t…I don’t want to force something between you and me, you know? Just because you feel like you have to do the right thing, which you _will_ , because you’re a good man—but I can’t sit here in good conscience and take advantage of that forever.”

Hank doesn’t move, biting into his bottom lip while his eyes flicker over Connor’s face.

“Listen to me,” he says, soft and low, before reaching out to tap a finger against Connor’s knee. “I’m not walking into this with any ulterior— _expectations_ , alright? There’s nothing you need to do as a deal breaker to stay here, and you can stay for as long as you fucking need to. If what happened last night was…shit, Connor, if that was a one-time thing, that’s fine, I just—”

Hank pulls in a shallow breath, shaking his head. “If we’re putting the brakes on all that, you gotta let me know right now.”

His eyes look lost, distant with some sharpened hurt he’ll only turn back on himself, and Connor knows he needs to move before Hank goes somewhere he can’t follow. He stands from the sofa, doing a small shuffle around Hank’s feet, and turns so he can ease down into the warm spread of the other man’s lap. Hank stiffens and Connor wraps his arms around his neck, pushing the cold tip of his nose against Hank’s temple.

“I want to stay,” he says, even though it’s hard to talk around whatever’s newly lodged in the back of his throat. “I don’t want to put the brakes on anything.”

Hank’s hands come up to wrap around his middle, thumb tracing along Connor’s bottom rib through the fabric of his shirt. “Thank God,” he sighs, almost like he’s talking to somebody not in the room with them. And then, with more feeling, “You gotta stop thinking I’m only entertaining you for some tail and some imaginary tax write-off, kid.”

“I know,” Connor says, and laughs weakly, holding onto Hank tighter as his body sags in relief. “I’m just a neurotic fucking mess.”

“You’re a lot more than that,” Hank says. “And what’s mine is yours, if I hadn’t made that clear enough already, so don’t act like you need to tiptoe around this house like a stranger. If you need anything to be comfortable, you just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”

Connor buries his nose in Hank’s hair and breathes in before pulling back, leaning over to brush a kiss against his mouth. It’s soft, curious—both a question and the answer. Hank tips into it despite the awkward angle, hand coming up to rest against Connor’s stomach.

“Don’t you dare tell me thank you for anything,” Hank says when they break apart, the words warm against Connor’s cheek. “If I didn’t want you right here with me I wouldn’t have brought you.”

Those words tease out a hard-won loop in the last tight knot of doubt in Connor’s mind, another snare of worry falling slack around his feet in loose coils. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be totally free of fear, if he’ll ever believe he deserved any of this—but he wants to. God, he fucking wants to.

“In that case,” Connor tells Hank, leaning in for another kiss that he hopes tastes like all the unspoken thanks he can muster, “it feels pretty good to be home.”  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Two cans of tomato soup are warmed up on the stove and divided back into two matching bowls, eaten without garnish or fuss. Hank offers to make grilled cheese after the bread from the freezer thaws but changes his mind when he spots fuzzy mold growing on the cheddar slices. Connor doesn’t mind, and they split a pack of crackers instead.

The house slowly comes back to life, each room falling back into use like a forgotten component of some complicated machine returning online. The television is running in the living room and Hank has clicked on a side table lamp to ward off the dreary October afternoon outside. The washing machine spins a load of clothes in the closet at the end of the hall and Connor and Hank have taken their turns in the bathroom, fogging up the mirror and leaving damp footprints in their wake.

The day is still young after lunch passes and Connor feels restless when he looks at the weekday hours stretching ahead of him. He hasn’t worked in two months or longer but muscle memory dies hard, the fidgety guilt of sitting idle somehow more intense now that they’re not in the ever-moving truck. Hank seems content to sink into the lumpy sofa and watch the back-and-forth of a basketball game, and it takes Connor more than a few minutes to gather the courage to ask for a ride into town.

Hank glances over at him, features neutral and relaxed. “You still have your license?” he asks, pointing toward the kitchen once Connor nods. “You can take the car if you want. Keys are in the bowl by the toaster.”

“Your car?” Connor asks, eyes widening a fraction.

“Who else’s?” Hank asks with a snort. “It’s old but it’s all there and the heater works just fine. I’ll go out there with you in case it stalls first thing after sitting for a while.”

Connor pulls his hoodie on over a borrowed undershirt and then zips back up into Hank’s flannel coat as he follows the man in question outside. Hank’s only in sweats and a t-shirt, gooseflesh prickling on the backs of his arms while he pulls the tarp off a black Oldsmobile that likely saw the end of the Reagan administration.

“What year is this?” Connor asks, letting Hank press the keys into his hand.

“Eighty-eight,” Hank says, folding his arms across his chest with a little smile. “Still runs like a dream.”

Connor laughs, one eye crinkling shut. “I was born in ’87.”

“And you still run pretty good, too,” Hank tells him, arching a lewd eyebrow. “Don’t try and make me feel any older, slick.”

When Connor’s sitting in the driver’s seat with Hank hanging in the window he cranks the ignition and the Oldsmobile sputters to life on the first try. The Beastie Boys start thumping on the radio loud enough that the bass shakes the ground, and Hank pulls a startled face before leaning over Connor to turn the volume down.

“Half a tank of gas should get you wherever and back,” Hank says, reaching up to scratch through his beard. “You need cash?”

“No,” Connor tells him, trying on a small smile. “I’m good, promise.”

“Got your phone?” Hank asks, and when Connor holds it up he steps back to slam the door into place. “Call me if you need anything.”

Connor’s caught between feeling like a teenager going out alone for the first time and a baby bird who doesn’t want to leave the nest. He hasn’t driven in—months, at best, and Hank’s only known him for five full days. He appreciates being able to use the car but can’t quite believe he’s allowed to take it out through Detroit unsupervised.

Maybe being recruited into a cult will do that to a man, though. And maybe a month spent on the road without full-acting agency will drive the nail in a little bit further.

“I’m just going to the University and a few more stops after that,” Connor says, wrapping one hand around the gear shift. “I should be back before dark.”

Hank nods, rubbing some warmth into his biceps with his palms. “No rush. I’ll text you the address in case you have trouble getting back.” He winks once and pats the roof twice before turning and heading back into the house, leaving Connor alone in the driveway.

Connor sits in the idling car for a few more moments and then blinks, gingerly shifting into reverse. He cranes around to check traffic and then lifts his foot off the break, the Oldsmobile faithfully creaking backward as it rolls into the street. He puts it in drive and starts off back toward the city skyline, feeling a little bit crazed when he lets out a bleary laugh. He misses his old car but this is—good. It’s good. And astoundingly freeing because he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed the simple act of getting in the car and going in whatever direction he damn well wanted.

His phone buzzes in his lap and he flips up the screen at a stop sign to see Hank’s promised text waiting in his unread messages. Connor doesn’t open it yet but smiles to himself as he slides the phone back into his coat pocket. He briefly considers calling ahead to the school but then decides against it, raising his eyebrows at himself in the rearview mirror instead.

“Don’t be a little bitch,” he mutters to his reflection, drawing in a deep breath as he grips the steering wheel tighter. “You’ve been through worse.”

He drives and tries not to think about what the first word out of Amanda’s mouth will be when she sees him.

  
  
  


Chloe’s usual vibrant smile doesn’t greet Connor when he first slides in through the department’s glass door and into the office, trying his best to act like he belongs. He’d taken his coat off and folded it over one arm and tried to lay his hair into something presentable but her hand still reaches to touch the red button on the intercom system, watching and waiting.

“Hi Chlo,” Connor says, and her mouth drops open when she recognizes his voice, blue eyes gone wide.

“Connor?” she says, rising halfway from her desk and jarring it enough to rattle the vase of periwinkle hydrangeas blooming on top. “Connor, oh my God, I haven’t stopped worrying about you since—”

“Been a while, huh?” Connor says as casually as he can, trying not to let his face heat up under the intensity of her stare. She strides over in white bunny slippers, her heeled booties undoubtedly hidden somewhere under her desk, and wraps her arms around his shoulders.

“What happened to you?” Chloe asks when she lets go, holding him at arm’s length to peer into his face. The bow of her mouth is unpainted but still pink, quivering with some emotion Connor couldn’t put a finger on. “Does she know?”

“Uh, no,” Connor says, ducking his head and thumbing over his own mouth. “I—that’s actually why I’m here. Is Amanda in the office? I’d like to speak with her if she’s free.”

Chloe lets her hands fall away, one palm smoothing over the front of her blouse. “Of course,” she says, blinking rapidly. “Even if she was busy you know she’d make time to see you. Let me go tell her you’re here.”

Connor watches Chloe walk back around her desk, still in her white slippers, disappearing down the short corridor to Amanda’s office door. She raps twice on the dark wood and then lets herself inside, leaving the door open only an inch in her wake. Connor counts to twenty-seven and can feel sweat beading between his shoulder blades by the time she comes back out.

“Doctor Stern will see you now,” Chloe says formally, stepping to one side so Connor has a clear path to the door. She reaches out to touch his shoulder as he passes, leaning in close enough that Connor walks through a warm puff of her perfume, the same as it’s always been.

“Try not to look like you’re walking to the gallows,” Chloe whispers, squeezing gently. “She’s missed you.”  

Connor nods, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, and goes to the door. No sooner do his fingers brush the handle does it swing out of his grasp, and there staring back at him on the other side is Amanda.

“Connor,” she says, those two syllables somehow bearing the weight of a thousand different things that go unsaid. Unlike Chloe she doesn’t reach for him right away, instead stepping aside so he has room to walk into the office. “Please come in.”

Amanda’s eyes are dark and depthless, full of life and energy like a night sky full of hidden stars. Connor slips under the intensity of her gaze as it passes across his face, undoubtedly cataloguing every little discoloration, scar, and burst vessel. She blinks and the only movement in the entire room for a few beats is the second hand on her glass clock and the delicate sway of her beaded earrings.

“Did the people at Jericho do this to you?” she asks.

“No,” Connor says, gaze fallen to the pashmina draped over her shoulder. His heartbeat is steady, breathing calm, body seamlessly readjusting to being in his adoptive mother’s gravitational pull. “I haven’t been in Florida or seen Markus in a month. You know Markus would never lay a hand on me.”

“I know Markus wouldn’t, but I’m not so sure about the rest,” Amanda says with a sniff, and then exhales, taking a measured step back. “Come sit with me.”

She leads him over to the bay window overlooking the fountain outside, sitting on the cushioned bench with her hands folded in her lap. They both look through the glass at the students and faculty walking outside, bundled up into thick coats and carrying backpacks and briefcases on the way to their next class or meeting.

“I tried calling you,” Amanda says. “Many times. When Chloe brought me your documents I waited two weeks to hear word and then considered hiring a private investigator. Not long after that those funds were reallocated back to some personal security measures when it became apparent I was being followed.”

Connor still can’t look at her, staring at nothing out the window. “They were trying to intimidate me,” he says, giving an erratic little shake of his head, jaw tightening as his throat constricts. “And I—you were right. About everything.” He lets out a gasping sort of laugh, not even trying to hide the tears welling fast at the corners of his eyes, unbidden and mortifying. “Because when are you not? When are you ever wrong?”

Amanda sits very still, watching him, and then reaches out to lay her hand across Connor’s forearm. He looks away and tries to swallow down the broken sound welling up in his chest, deep enough that it makes his lungs ache.

“I’ve been wrong before and I’ll be wrong a fathomless number of times more than that,” Amanda says. She tries to search his face again, hand still light as a feather on his arm, and waits until Connor roughly wipes across his face and turns to look back at her, eyes red-rimmed and glassy.

“What’s done is done, Connor,” Amanda says firmly. “I’m only glad you made it back as safely as you have, though it seems it still wasn’t safely enough. Do we need to press charges?”

Connor lets out a shuddering breath, shaking his head. “No,” he croaks. “Even if I knew who attacked me it wouldn’t change anything.” He tries for a laugh, pitiful as it sounds. “Like you said, what’s done is done.”

Amanda briefly squeezes his arm before drawing her hand back into her lap. “Are you safe now?” she asks.

“Yes,” Connor says without pause. Part of him wants to ponder why he spoke so fast and the other part knows exactly why. “I—I’m staying with someone Jericho doesn’t know about. He’s the reason I even made it back to Detroit at all.”

There’s an almost imperceptible lift in Amanda’s eyebrows, but she doesn’t pry. She stands and walks across the room so the light, silvery fabric of her slacks moves like liquid mercury.

“We have been busy here,” she says, fingers trailing around her desk as she goes to a sideboard table where there’s a carafe of water and a set of glasses. “I’ve been advising one of my former students on his ongoing initiative to get a new company off the ground, but there have been some holdups in the process. Some larger than others, but Elijah is particularly tenacious.”

Amanda pours a glass of water and then another for herself, bringing both back over to the bay window. She hands one to Connor and then returns to the broad front side of her desk a few paces away, leaning there to idly sip at her drink.

Connor remembers Elijah Kamski only because of how young he was when he entered the university program four years ago. Amanda had immediately taken him under her wing, heralding the thirteen-year-old as some sort of miraculous protégé. A child then, and still a child now.

“Oh?” Connor says out of more politeness than real interest, bringing his glass up to his lips. “What’s he been building or blowing up now?”

“We’re currently researching ways to develop complex plastics from petrochemicals for a new AI prototype,” Amanda says. “In fact, Elijah just received a private freight shipment of crude oil directly from Florida two days ago. It was so far behind schedule the company had to send another driver out to retrieve it and we’ve had to reorganize the conversion timetables.”

Connor nearly drops his glass to the floor, dribbling some water down his front in the process of regaining his grip on it. Amanda stares at him while he tries to recover, setting the glass on the windowsill and blotting at the damp spots on his sweatshirt with the sleeve of Hank’s coat.

“That’s—unfortunate,” he manages, forcing himself to meet her eyes only for a fleeting second. “What…what’s this AI prototype thing? You mean like supercomputers?”

“In the working abstract, yes,” Amanda says carefully, features giving nothing away. “More aligned with the concept of supercomputers that look and act like you and me.”

Connor blinks at that, suddenly unsure of what to say. “Where’s Kamski’s foothold in the ethics of something like this?”

“Still going through some growing pains, but that’s not for us to worry about right now,” Amanda says, pushing away from her desk to walk around to the other side. She opens a drawer and pulls out a sealed envelope, holding it between both hands. “I understand you’re likely here to pick these up more than talk about research projects with me.”

Amanda walks over and Connor stands to meet her, accepting the same envelope he’d dropped off with Chloe before leaving for Florida months ago.

“Thanks for holding on to them,” he murmurs, immediately pressing the envelope against his side like a flimsy shield. “I’m sorry for—how all that turned out. But I know Markus won’t let any real harm come to light if he has his say in things.”

“Ever the appeasing force of nature, that man,” Amanda says sagely. “I hope you’re ready to move on and mend whatever’s been broken.”

Connor cracks a smile at that despite his thumping heart. “I’m ready to let the past be the past, that’s for sure.”

He nearly flinches when Amanda’s palm raises, fingers outstretched until the cool pads brush across his cheek. It’s a gentle touch, gone almost as quickly as it arrived.

“I know we haven’t always seen things on the same level, and there have been times where I may have been overbearing,” she says, clearing her throat a bit. “But I will always consider you my son. You may be grown now but I’ll do anything in my power to protect you if I can.”

“Thank you, Amanda,” Connor says, eyes flickering over her face one more time before he shrugs into his coat and reaches for the door. “Hopefully you won’t need to anymore.”

“You know I can help,” Amanda says, taking a single step toward Connor where he stands in the open doorway. Chloe’s blonde head turns to look from where she’s seated at her desk, her rapid typing come to a sudden halt. “There’s always a place for you in my garden, Connor.”

Connor’s stomach flips when he hears that, an old thing Amanda used to say when he was still a boy. He thinks of the blooming roses she grew, big as grapefruit, and remembers how he never felt included among their unworldly splendor. He sticks his hand in his pocket for the car keys, and the first thing he touches is the crepe paper peony Hank had given him three nights ago.

“I think I’ve outgrown the garden,” Connor says simply, clutching the fuzzy pipe cleaner between his finger and thumb where it’s hidden in the coat. He dips his head at Chloe and then heads for the department door. “Thank you again.”

Ten minutes later, returned to the driver seat of Hank’s Oldsmobile in the visitor parking lot, Connor thumbs open the envelope and tips the contents out into his lap. He finds his social security card and birth certificate just as he left them, and then at least twenty crisp $100 bills flutter out to land between his knees and in the floorboard.

He picks up a wad of the money and holds it up to the autumn light coming in through the windshield. Doesn’t cry, or laugh, or dissolve into hysterics. Only reaches for his wallet to check if his useless debit card is still there, finding it in one piece pressed alongside the sheet of paper he’d ripped off a Motel 6 notepad in North Carolina.

Connor reads the text Hank had sent with the house address, leaving it there for later. He puts the old car in drive and leaves the university campus behind to head back for Detroit proper. There’s a mile-long list of things he could and should do, but the day is growing shorter and he’d promised to be home again before dark. A haircut is definitely in order, and maybe after that he’ll head to the bank and feed most of Amanda’s money into the ATM machine where it’ll exist on a little piece of plastic he doesn’t have to think too hard about.

There’s a Planned Parenthood clinic down the street from the credit union, conveniently enough. Connor wonders if they’re taking walk-ins today.

More than that, he surmises, Hank really deserves a damn good dinner.  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


The sun is just beginning to slip beneath the skyline when Connor pulls into the driveway and turns off the Oldsmobile. The Peterbilt looms there, a comfortingly familiar shape, paint looking more black than royal blue in the deepening twilight. Hank had even flipped the outdoor lights on in anticipation of Connor coming back late.

Connor checks his fresh haircut in the visor mirror, briefly trying to tuck away the little curl still flopping over his forehead until he gives up and gets an armload of grocery bags instead. He’s walking around to the trunk when Hank appears in the front door, Sumo bounding out ahead of him to dance around Connor’s legs like they’ve been apart for weeks instead of hours.

“Hey,” Hank calls out through the half-dark as he walks up, eyeing the grocery bags with an unreadable look on his face. “What’s all this?”

“Dinner and more,” Connor says, and then picks up a fat orange pumpkin by the stem before depositing it into Hank’s arms. “That’s for your stoop.”

“What’s wrong with my stoop?” Hank asks, holding the pumpkin against his belly while Connor slams the trunk shut.

“Nothing, really,” Connor says, suddenly feeling a touch more shy than emboldened. “I just thought it could use a little seasonal touch.”

“Huh,” Hank says, looking down at the gourd in question before peering back up at Connor. They watch each other for a lingering moment, stuck in some quiet standstill.

Hank wordlessly reaches out and pulls one of the heavier bags off Connor’s arm before leading the way up the front walk so he can set the pumpkin down by the steps. “C’mon,” he says. “No use standing out here in the cold.”

In the kitchen Connor starts unpacking the groceries while Hank leans a shoulder in the doorway, watching him with a tiny crease pulling between his eyes.

“You didn’t have to buy anything, y’know,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair. “And I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but color me curious about how you even pulled it off.”

Connor glances up at him, pulling a cellophane-wrapped pack of New York strip cuts out of a bag and setting them over by the stove. “Don’t worry, no dick sucking was involved,” he says lightly, thoroughly enjoying how red Hank’s face gets at the mere suggestion. “I paid Amanda a visit and she handed me a decent chunk of cash without interest, so in the very least I figured I could help stock up the fridge.”

“Oh,” Hank says a bit dumbly, still flushed. He crosses his arms over his stomach, pauses, and then uncrosses them again to walk over and start putting things in the pantry. “Listen, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“You didn’t,” Connor says, dropping a bag of baking potatoes next to the sink. He puts the sour cream and shredded cheese in the fridge for now, sliding in a half-gallon of milk alongside them on the top shelf. “But speaking of dicks, mine has a clean bill of health.”

Connor reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a folded slip of white legal paper, holding it out between two fingers. Hank eyeballs it warily before reaching out to take it, though he doesn’t yet open up the sheet to read the results.

“You know I already trusted you,” he says gruffly, sniffing some. The air changes around them some, warming up a degree or two, tightening at the edges. “But I’m glad everything’s…I’m just glad it’s all good.”

Hank unfolds the paper and glances at the printout before quickly folding it again, sandwiching the square between his big palms before drawing in a sharp breath. “Do you want me to get tested too, or—?”

Connor levels him with a curious look. “When’s the last time you slept with somebody you didn’t know?”

Hank thinks back, trying to remember the blurry faces of the few women he’d quickly and unsuccessfully dated in the second year after Cole’s death before hanging it up altogether. One had been a sweet-faced kindergarten teacher, and when she started talking about her classroom of five-year-olds Hank had excused himself to the bathroom and nearly puked in the restaurant sink. Another had been an established lawyer, prim and olive-skinned with sharp green eyes, but it’d never been destined to last.

And maybe at the time, Hank hadn’t really wanted it to.

“There were a few ladies, couple years ago,” Hank says, looking down at his socks where his feet are crossed at the ankle. “After…Jen left. Nobody—uh. Nobody I met on the street or anything like that.”

He looks up at Connor and sees something light up behind his brown eyes, warmly mischievous as much as it is curious. “So when’s the last time you fucked another man?” Connor asks.

“Before you?” Hank says immediately, voice gone up half an octave. “Shit, I don’t even know anymore—probably been twelve, fifteen years. Back when I was a younger and braver man, I guess.”

“Did you prefer older or younger?” Connor asks, and Hank’s mouth has long since gone dry.

“Uh, mostly around the same age, I think,” he sputters. “Maybe one or two were older and—why are we having this conversation right now?”

Connor’s eyes gleam again, and Hank knows what’s coming and decides he’ll have to rise to the occasion and meet him. “Top or bottom?”

Hank holds Connor’s steady gaze, arms still crossed across his chest. He lifts his chin just a hair and only says one word. “Both.”

“Hm,” Connor hums, tapping a forefinger against his mouth in thought. He looks like he’s filing that information away for later, and Hank suddenly feels very hot in his cold tiled kitchen.

But Connor is back to business just as quickly as he deviated away from dinner prep, turning on the sink and tugging his sweatshirt sleeves up to merrily start scrubbing potatoes. “Do you want me to sear this meat on the stovetop or put it in the broiler?”

Hank pulls a box of pasta from another grocery bag and stares at it like he’s seeing tri-color rotini noodles for the very first time. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“We haven’t had much of an opportunity, being stuck in the truck for the past five days,” Connor says, setting his four washed potatoes on the drying rack. “I’m not too shabby at it. Where’s your aluminum foil?”

Hank hasn’t made a single square meal in his own kitchen in at least a year, but somehow Connor slides into it seamlessly—not doing anything fancy or particularly difficult, but cooking with a subdued sureness as he wraps up jacket potatoes and flips the strip every few minutes to start browning the other side. He tosses fresh-cut green beans in a skillet to sauté with some olive oil and spices and it’s maybe the greenest fucking thing Hank’s seen in this house since he bought it.

The smell of garlic hangs in the air while Connor pads around the kitchen in socks and he wonders if he’s dreaming. Even Sumo wanders in with a string of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth, looking up expectantly.

Hank clears old mail and junk off the little kitchen table he never uses and has to wipe a fine layer of dust off the goddamn thing much to his own embarrassment. But Connor doesn’t care, only brings the butter and sour cream and cheese over and then pours two glasses of what Hank notices, with a start, is nothing more than sparkling grape juice.

“Are we having a tea party?” Hank grouses, already thinking about the six pack of beer sitting on the bottom shelf of his fridge. He’d had two while Connor was gone, and the four left are a sore temptation, not to mention his stash in the cabinet above the fridge.

“It’s cheap and I’m a sugar whore,” Connor says, taking a dainty sip before sitting down at the table and pushing Hank’s chair out with his toes. “Come and get it.”

They tuck into dinner with the TV still droning in the living room but it’s nice, Hank thinks, to sit down and have a meal with somebody at home. And the Connor sitting across from him tonight is different yet, somehow, from the Connor who’d inhaled a stack of pancakes at Cracker Barrel nearly a week before.

He doesn’t even realize he’s staring until Connor squeezes one eye shut, the dimple on his cheek deepening on the same side. There’s a green bean speared on his fork, held halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“You look nice,” Hank says, and then mentally kicks himself for sounding so stupid. “I mean, well, you—uh, yeah.”

“I got a haircut earlier, if that’s it,” Connor says, casually popping the green bean into his mouth, but Hank doesn’t miss the pinkness in his cheeks. There’s a moment of quiet and then he blurts out, “Does it still count as a date if you’re at home?”

Hank splutters into his grape juice and has to mop some out of his mustache, laughing into his napkin. “I don’t see why not.”

To Hank, this doesn’t feel like a dinner date—it feels like living with somebody again, sharing space, having a warm body in his bed for more than just a quick fuck. They’d slept soundly the whole night through in the truck, and he hopes the same holds true now that they’re off eighteen wheels and settled back on solid ground.

Christ above, he never thought he’d approach anything bordering on domestic ever again.

“Thanks for making dinner,” Hank says, looking down at his clean plate appreciatively. “This was actually pretty fucking great.”

“I’ll add that quote into my collection of Michelin star reviews,” Connor snorts, but he’s grinning as he polishes off his last bite of baked potato. “There’s dessert, too, but that comes out of a box.”

One of the old Rocky movies is on TV while they scrape every last bite of apple pie and ice cream out of two bowls, Hank sprawled on the sofa while Connor sits with his feet tucked up under him on the love seat. Sumo is snoring in his bed by the furnace, perfectly content with the few scraps of meat he got with his dinner. Hank takes his and Connor’s dishes back into the kitchen and doesn’t even realize how late it’s gotten now, though the idea of asking Connor to come to bed still makes him feel a little lightheaded.

He drops back down on the couch instead when he feels Connor’s eyes on him, opening up his arm and tipping his head to one side. “Come over here with me.”

Connor doesn’t even hesitate, up and sinking back down on the couch to cozy up against Hank’s side like he was just waiting on bated breath for the opportunity to present itself. He settles somewhere against the crook between Hank’s neck and shoulder and Hank gets a whiff of the top of his head, hair clean and slightly perfumed from whatever the barber had washed and styled it with at the shop.

One of Connor’s hands comes up to rest just above Hank’s stomach as he leans in. Neither of them are really watching the movie on TV, but Hank thinks he might sit here for an eternity and listen to Sylvester Stallone bellow in the background if it means having some sweet thing tucked into his lap. He scribbles out a brief note on his mental notepad about how tactile Connor is when he’s allowed or encouraged to touch. Just on this side of being needy, but Hank doesn’t mind. It’s nice to be _wanted_ , just as you are, and he supposes that’s probably a private truth that rings true for the both of them even if neither have the voice to say it.

Hank glimpses what the near future may bring and decides he and Connor need to take the truck out tomorrow, rain or shine, and put some practice miles on the odometer. Maybe they’ll swing back by the warehouse and talk to Jeff, maybe they won’t. There are some bills to pay and laundry to fold and Hank needs to start organizing some new haul jobs to pay off his blown head gasket and more, but for now, he’s got Connor here. Both their bellies are full, a warm bed is waiting somewhere down the hall, and there’s a goddamn pumpkin on Hank’s front porch for the first time since Cole died.

He could go for another drink, maybe, but then decides it’s not worth moving off the couch or out from under Connor.

Yeah, Hank thinks to himself, bringing a palm up to rest on Connor’s bony hip. Shit may be far from perfect, but this’ll do just fine.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you who follow me on twitter may recall seeing some posts about my uncle suffering a stroke and massive brain bleed while on work business in Las Vegas this past Friday. It didn’t feel quite right to speak anymore about the topic there (mostly because of how crazed my fandom tweets look juxtaposed with more serious family problems), but I thought I’d let you know that he passed away on Tuesday, December 18th, after life support was discontinued per his wishes. 
> 
> Uncle Tommy was a career escort driver for big rigs and spent the past thirty-plus years crisscrossing North America, helping guide truckers with oversized freight loads through just about every single state in the lower 48. He saw some beautiful sights while he was here and I like to think he was an accomplished man in life, humble and soft-spoken though he was, when he passed on far too soon. I say all this because listening to his stories about life on the road helped inspire some of the things you’ve read in eighteen wheels, and even though I know he’d have no interest in this story, I want to preserve his memory here for what it’s worth.
> 
> Thanks for all the support and love for this fic, guys. You’re the best! Happy holidays, and here's to a bright new year ahead ❤


	10. Chapter 10

  
  
Tuesday morning finds the truck parked on a crumbling side road far outside the bustling borders of Detroit. Trees flank either side of the asphalt and no other traffic has been seen coming or going for the past half-hour Hank’s spent going through gears and gauges with Connor while they rolled up one way and then turned around to head back.

There’s a burned-out husk of an old farmhouse about a quarter-mile ahead and not much else to hit, thank Christ, but Hank’s not taking any chances. He’s standing on the running board on the driver’s side, the autumn sun warm on his back, leaning in to look at where Connor’s sitting in the hot seat like a kid dropped into a jet cockpit.

“You ever driven a stick before?” Hank asks, trying not to sound worried.

“I did back in high school,” Connor says with a hint of pride in his voice. “Amanda had an old Porsche convertible I learned to drive in.”

“I doubt Porsche makes eighteen-speed transmissions, but good enough to start,” Hank says with a sigh, then nods toward the gear shift. “You saw the pattern I was shifting in and out of, right?”

“Yep,” Connor says with a tiny smile, taking the gear in his right hand before looking back over. “ _H_ for Hank.”

All in all, it’s a miracle Hank’s still living.

“Uh, right,” he says anyway, clearing his throat. “The easiest way to learn is to practice shifting in the shape of an H. So—“ he continues, reaching in to cover Connor’s hand with his own to start manipulating the stick, “—you go two, three, four, five, then split into high range. After that you shift the H pattern again and go six, seven, eight, nine, and split up to overdrive for the top gear if need be.”

He goes through the loop with Connor one more time then pulls back, leaving him to it. “Try it a few times on your own, just to get a better feel for it.”

Connor fumbles the first set halfway through but calmly sets himself right and does it again, hitting every gear along the way. He looks pretty pleased with himself until Hank taps his ankle and points into the floorboard at the array of foot pedals under the dash. “Now you’ve got to know how to do all that with and without the clutch, not to mention double clutching and floating the gears.”

“Oh,” Connor says blandly, staring wide-eyed at all the gauges and buttons on the dash before slumping back into the seat so his head thunks against the leather. “Damn. This isn’t going to be an overnight process, is it?”

“Not even a fortnight, sweetheart,” Hank says with a laugh, and he’s not sure which of them is more surprised at how easily that last word slipped out but he powers on through anyway. “I hadn’t mentioned this yet because I didn’t want you to freak out on me, but you can’t even get a pre-hire letter from Fowler until you’ve passed the written CDL tests and enrolled in a driving program.”

The expression on Connor’s face signals they may be in store for a freak-out yet. “You know I can’t afford driving school,” he says, blinking hard at Hank. “There’s—I mean, there’s no fucking way—”

“And that’s why you’re enrolled in Anderson’s Driving School for the time being and not someplace charging an arm and a leg downtown,” Hank says, patting Connor’s thigh. “It’ll be fine and we’ll work it all out. You just have to know it may take some time between studying and passing off all your exams, getting your learner’s permit, all the usual bureaucratic bullshit like that.”

Connor’s teeth have sunk down far enough into his bottom lip that another quarter-millimeter would probably draw blood. “I don’t have an income to support myself through this, Hank,” he says, reaching up to lightly touch his own bitten mouth in faraway thought. “It could take months.”

“Sure you do,” Hank says, momentarily distracted. “—have an income, I mean. You’re handling all the calls and logs, remember? We’re just on downtime between jobs right now so there’s not much to do.”

Connor takes the stick shift in hand, going through each gear once and then again, silently counting all the way up to eighteen. Hank only watches him while the birds and squirrels chatter in the trees outside and tries to imagine a future where he’s sitting shotgun while Connor does this like it’s second nature.

“You’re being awfully generous, you know,” Connor says, smoothly going between seventh and eighth as he does, and then getting stuck on the split into overdrive after ninth.

“Am I not allowed to be?” Hank asks. “You’re learning. This shit takes time when you do it right. And I seem to recall somebody telling me maybe, one time, that the world wasn’t built in a fuckin’ day.”

That cracks another little smile out of Connor, his head dipping in that sweet way that makes Hank kind of crazy. “I guess you got me there,” he says.

“Good,” Hank tells him. “Now stop your hand-wringing for five minutes and crank this thing up, I’m coming around to get in so you can take it for a spin.”

“I don’t really know if I’m rea—” Connor starts to say, but Hank only steps down off the running board and slams the door into place. He walks around the front of the truck and then hauls himself back up on the passenger side, feeling a little off-kilter not being in the driver’s seat but weirdly energized nonetheless.

Connor is staring at him like a deer caught in the floodlights.

“What?” Hank blurts out. “The key’s right there in the ignition. Go for it.”

“What if I break your entire livelihood?” Connor asks, so seriously that Hank has to bite back a chuckle.

“You won’t,” Hank tells him, and then sinks back into his own seat with a sigh. “Maybe it wasn’t much of a livelihood to begin with, anyhow.”

Connor’s eyes waver and then narrow. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing important,” Hank says gruffly. “Start her up, kid. We’ll just cruise up to the end of the road and back, taking it slow and steady for right now.”  

“Alright,” Connor says with a nod, reaching down to turn the key with his lip snared between his teeth again. He almost looks surprised when the diesel engine rumbles to life and Hank can’t quite help but smile.

He also thinks of Cole, briefly and painfully, and what it might’ve meant to teach his son how to drive when he turned fifteen. But this isn’t about Cole, Cole’s long gone, and Hank doesn’t know how or why he still lets himself fall on these sharpened swords like a blind man running through the dark. Instead he focuses back on Connor, forcibly blinking away the memory of a second-grader’s smiling face.

“You can start low and work it up a few notches,” Hank says. “Take your foot off the clutch and let it rip. If we choke, we choke—it happens to everybody.”

Connor is hyper-focused despite his nerves, and Hank can practically see him going through every mental note and motion a half-second before he does it. He releases the clutch and then eases off the break, letting the truck roll forward along the rough road.

“Start going through your gears,” Hank tells him, watching Connor go down to three and back up to four as they slowly pick up a little more speed. “The lows are mostly for slow driving and mountain hauls, so you’ll run through ‘em fast.”

They get up to about twenty miles an hour and Connor lets the truck stay in gear while he coasts along, hand resting there on the shifter. He chances a look over at Hank and flashes a thousand-watt grin that says it all, dimples shining so big that one even deepens under his eye.

Hank’s chest feels suspiciously tight but he reaches over and brushes his fingers against Connor’s chin, tipping his face back toward the road. “Don’t look at me, cowboy,” he says with a low laugh. “I’ll have to dock points for distracted driving.”

Connor turns his attention back to the empty road and tries to pick up speed, but the transmission starts grinding until he shifts up into the right gear. “How am I doing so far?” he asks, still bright-eyed and willing, and even if Connor was driving them off a cliff into the goddamn ocean Hank probably wouldn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.

“You’re doing great, kid,” Hank says, and Connor’s face lights up twofold. The paved road ahead eventually runs out and turns to dirt, so Connor’s going to have to learn how to put it in reverse and turn around here in a second, but for now Hank just lets him enjoy the drive.

It might only be one small lesson down with a million more to go, but that’s no big thing. There’s a will and a way set in motion, and Hank reminds himself—not for the first time here lately—that if they’ve got any fucking currency strung between them, they’re plenty rich with time.  
  


* * *  
  


Hank’s flask hangs like a block of lead in his inner jacket pocket, swinging against his side in a hidden reminder with every step. A slight tremor had taken up residence in his hands just before noontime, nothing anybody but him could see unless they were searching for it, but he’s doing his damndest not to fish the flask out for a drink. At least not in front of Connor, who’d naturally noticed his fingers trembling on their drive to the freight warehouse downtown.

“You shouldn’t…tempt yourself like that,” Connor says, quietly careful, eyes strayed right to the spot in Hank’s coat where his sipper of Jack is concealed. “It may be better to just leave it at home.”

“No use in cutting down if you can’t resist temptation when it’s there,” Hank says as they make it to the warehouse’s office door, hoping to God this is the end of that conversation for now. He pays no mind to the exterior anymore but Connor tips his head back to get a better look at the _Fowler & Sons_ sign bolted to the aluminum siding.

“I still don’t look my best,” he says, standing outside the door Hank holds open long enough to let the heat start seeping out. Connor’s face briefly tilts downward, falling shadow making the bruising around his eyes darker. “I was hoping to make a better impression.”

Hank shrugs, pushing his tongue around his mouth to combat the sudden dryness there. “You’re not asking outright for a job just yet,” he says. “We’re just here to make introductions and get a foot in the door so Jeff starts seeing you around the place.”

Connor squares his shoulders and rakes both hands back through his hair but the front curl still flops over his forehead. “Do you think he’s still angry about what happened with the oil tanker?”

“Can’t say,” Hank sighs, urging him inside with a hand on Connor’s elbow. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

They pass through reception where a middle-aged lady with orange lacquered acrylic nails looks up and winks at Hank with a landline phone cradled between her ear and shoulder. One of her canine teeth has a small diamond inlaid in it, catching the light when she smiles.

“Hey baby,” she says, holding a palm over the receiver, eyes briefly skirting over Connor’s face with mild interest. “You here looking for Jeffrey? He should be up in the big office. I think that Advil’s had enough time to kick in if you wanna head up there and knock.”

“Thanks, beautiful,” Hank says, grinning back at her. “See you around.”

“Oh?” Connor says once they pass through the front office and walk out into the concrete warehouse, eyebrows high on his forehead.  

“That’s Toni,” Hank says. “ _Miss_ Toni to you until you’re on her good side, and she’ll be sure to remind you if you forget it.”

“I see,” Connor tuts, obviously teasing. The freight floor and loading docks are mostly empty this time of day, just a few palettes of shrink-wrapped goods and an idle forklift hanging about while two guys sit on overturned buckets and play cards by the bay door. “You’re such a ladies man, Mr. Anderson.”

Hank makes a rough sound in the back of his throat as he goes to take the stairs up to the second floor. “Don’t act like you don’t know all about it, too,” he says, cutting Connor a sly look from the corner of his eye, the blue there sparkling. “Guess I’ve still got it.”

Outside the office door Hank stops and turns halfway, two fingers brushing Connor’s upper arm while they pause in a sudden standstill.

“You all good?” he asks, voice pitched low. “Just be yourself and try to relax. We’re shaking hands and then we’re rolling back out.”

“I’m fine,” Connor whispers, giving Hank a tiny smile. “Go ahead.”

Three raps on the door bids them entry, a deep voice on the other side telling them to _come on in, then_. Hank shoulders his broad frame in the doorway, knob still in hand, and clears his throat. “How’s that migraine treating you?”

“Drilling a hole through my fucking skull, but nowhere near as bad as the headache you gave me this past week,” Fowler says, swiveling in his chair to face the door. “Consider me shocked to shit you’re even showing face up here, Hank. Now come inside and quit letting all my damn heat out.”

Hank slides in with a sheepish grin, waiting there while Connor follows him across the threshold. Fowler’s eyes widen a fraction, lips parted in some unspoken question while he waits for the door to latch back in place.

There’s an odd pocket of silence, and then Connor is stepping across the room with an outstretched hand over the top of Fowler’s desk. “Connor Stern, sir,” he says, waiting until Fowler holds up a confused hand for him to grip and shake. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Call me Jeff, and likewise,” Fowler says slowly, and then looks straight at Hank over Connor’s shoulder. “Holy shit, is that the hitchhiker you picked up down south?”

“Uh, yeah,” Hank says simply, slipping his hands into his coat pockets and rocking back some on his heels. “He’s the one.”

Fowler barks out a laugh, slapping the top of his desk with the flat of his hand. “Good God,” he says. “Richard came back up here telling me some poncy bullshit like he does about an _unfortunately compromised appearance_ , but goddamn, son, it looks like you went headfirst through the meat grinder.”

“Nearly, sir,” Connor says, trying to tamper down the rush of mortified heat crawling up his neck, and then Hank’s hand is on his shoulder and steering him around to one of the two empty chairs across from Fowler’s desk. They both take a seat and Fowler leans back in his chair, swiveling from side to side with his hands folded across his chest.

“As a matter of fact, Rich also mentioned that you’re my newest recruit,” Fowler says as his brows climb up his forehead. “Which is pretty damn funny, considering I don’t quite recall signing off on any pre-hire letters for one Connor Stern.”

“I think there might’ve been a misunderstanding in translation, Jeff,” Hank says abruptly. “Connor is just—”

“I’m in the process of getting my commercial driving permit,” Connor pipes in, meeting Fowler’s surprised stare head-on. “I haven’t been contracted with anybody yet, but it’d definitely be ideal if I could fill any potential openings with your company.”

Fowler’s chair finally stops swiveling when a new crease draws between his eyes. “Why here when you could get trained and hired on with any other freight shipping company or truck broker in Detroit?” he asks. “I can walk outside and throw a stone and hit somebody in the metro area looking to pick up a new driver by next week.”

Connor wets his bottom lip and weighs out his options, and then decides his best bet is probably just to tell the truth. “I was interested in co-driving with Hank.”

Fowler lets out another sudden hoot of laughter. “Is that true, Hank?” he asks. “You’re looking for a co-driver and just happened to find one hitchhiking in South Carolina?”

Hank looks like he’s ready to astral project to anywhere on earth other than this room, but lets out a sigh and nods. “We’ve…discussed it,” he says. “Connor’s got the gumption to make it happen. I wouldn’t have even considered it if I didn’t think he was cut out for the part.”

There’s another long string of quiet, only filled in by the muffled din of a steel drum hitting the concrete pad in the warehouse outside. “You know what?” Fowler says after a moment, shaking his head from side to side. “Don’t tell me how you two figured this out. Keep it your own little secret, because I can already tell I don’t even want to know.”

“But tell me this, son,” Fowler continues without missing a beat, turning his attention back on Connor. “Why would I hire you over any other Tom, Dick, and Harry who walks in here and asks for a job?”

Connor folds his hands in his lap and sits up straighter. He wants to look over at Hank so badly—for guidance, for reassurance, for a wink, for anything. But the ball’s in his court now, and Fowler’s waiting on an answer that only Connor can give.

“I’m a hard worker and I know this is something I want to invest my time and skill set into,” Connor says. “More than that, even, I think Hank and I make a good team. I was able to nail down the best price in town for the blown head gasket repairs when we were stranded in Kentucky.”

Fowler’s eyes snap over to Hank. “That’s a fact?”

“Sure is,” Hank says, reaching up to palm the back of his neck while he glances over at Connor. “Every mechanic in town quoted me at four grand and Connor talked one down to two and a quarter. Saved me a shit ton of money.”

“Huh,” Fowler says with an impressed tilt to his mouth, tipping back in his chair. “Not bad, Stern.”

“I’m eager to learn the ins and outs of the business,” Connor says, cheeks coloring just a tad. “But for now I’m happy to do whatever Hank needs help with in the meantime.”

Fowler looks between the two men seated across from him. There’s an old fondness in his eyes for Hank despite the tough line of his brow, but also a fine-edged curiosity gnawing somewhere under the surface. Like Hank is a puzzle he’s been staring at for decades, all the pieces laid out in front of him, and somehow such a large section has remained unsolved.

If he has any burning questions, for now he doesn’t ask them.

Instead Fowler raises a hand to point in Hank’s direction, though his eyes move to find Connor’s. “Despite his best efforts to convince everybody otherwise, Hank Anderson is a good man,” he says. “Always has been in the thirty years I’ve known him and probably won’t stop anytime soon. And if he’s got even an iota of faith in what you can do now, I suppose I’d be interested to see how you work with that permit under your belt.”

“Tell you what,” Fowler says then, letting out a long sigh. “You go steady on earning that CDL and keep Hank here out of trouble. I’ll give him a call when the next free haul comes down the pipe and if you two don’t fuck things up royally, we’ll start talking bigger business when you get back and square up with your permit.”

“I— _really?_ Oh, wow,” Connor breathes out, temporarily dazed, leaned so far forward in his chair that he’s getting ready to pitch forward and smack headfirst into the desk. “Thank you so much for the opportunity, Jeff, I—I actually can’t wait to get started.”

“Don’t go thanking me just yet,” Fowler snorts. “You still owe me a clean haul on a schedule so damn tight I could bounce a quarter off it, and _then_ we’ll see how shit swings from there.”

A wide grin dawns on Connor’s face like sunlight through overcast clouds, and he looks over at Hank to make sure they’d heard the same thing. Hank’s hand is braced with his thumb under his jaw and his forefinger resting against his temple but he slowly winks once, mouth twitching up into an easy smile.

Fowler rounds on Hank, eyebrows aloft. “That sound fair to you?” he asks. “I think it can go without saying that I’m trusting you enough to take a possible liability and turn it into an asset, here.”

“Connor’s his own man, not what I’d call an asset,” Hank says after a beat, smooth and steady, letting his hand fall from his face to rest on one knee. “But wherever I’m concerned he keeps proving himself more every day, so all that sounds perfectly good in my book.”

“Great,” Fowler says, thumping his desk with one fist like a gavel before reaching for the phone sitting in its cradle. “Well, this has surely been precious and all, but I’ve got more important shit to do than sit here and play patty-cake. You should be hearing something from me in the next couple days.”

Hank nods, sliding his palms down his thighs as he moves to stand. “We’ll go ahead and get out of the hair you have left, Jeff,” he says. “Pleasure to come crawling up here for an earful of your dulcet tones, as always.”

“Thin ice, Anderson,” Fowler says, though he waves them toward the door with a barked laugh and his extended middle finger. “Don’t let me catch you up here again until I’ve got a trailer for you to haul.”

Connor decides to forgo a goodbye when Fowler dials a number on the phone and puts it up to his ear, knocking back a handful of Tums and crunching loudly as he and Hank file back out into the warehouse together and make their way toward the front office.

Outside again and away from any prying stares, Connor hardly waits until they’re halfway to the truck before he nearly tackles Hank in the parking lot. His body slams into Hank hard enough that he lets out an _oof_ of surprise, and then Connor’s wrapped around him and smacking a kiss against his jaw.

“I’m sorry, I’m just—I got excited,” Connor says, blushing furiously and still physically buzzing as he clings to Hank’s arm. “That went so much better than I thought it would.”

“I’d say so,” Hank says, chuckling as he slings an arm low around Connor’s waist and guides him along back to where they’re parked, keeping him pressed into the curve of his side. “You feeling better about things now?”

“Yes,” Connor breathes out, tingling all over with relief and the warmth radiating off Hank in waves. He wants to crawl inside the fleece lining of Hank’s jacket and just cocoon himself there, safe and happy, tipping his face up to kiss him until they’re both struck stupid.

Hank must be roaming along a similar vein of thought because he gently crowds Connor up against the side of the sun-warmed metal as soon as they’re hidden behind the truck, taking his face between both hands to brush their mouths together in a chaste kiss. Connor hums in pleasure, slipping his knee between Hank’s thighs, and gets a hold of Hank’s jacket front to pull him closer.

He gently nips the swell of Hank’s bottom lip, just the tiniest little love bite, and smiles against his mouth when Hank lets out a low sound and crushes their bodies closer as the kiss deepens.

“Feeling a little feisty too, huh?” Hank growls when they pull back apart, tonguing the place where Connor nipped his lip while he watches him under hooded eyes. “Shame we’re probably on surveillance video from at least three different angles right now.”

“That’s okay,” Connor says, six-foot frame feeling delightfully small pressed between Hank and the side of the Peterbilt. “Let them watch if they want.”

“Maybe some other time,” Hank tells him, hands sliding down Connor’s sides to rest in the little divots above his hips as he leaves another sweeter, whiskery kiss against his temple. “For right now I think I’d like to keep you all to myself.”

Despite his soft smile Hank looks tired out here in the sunlight, a little dark under the eyes, and when he brings up a hand to push his hair back Connor sees that faint tremble in his fingers again. He rests two fingers over the heavy hand Hank has at his waist, looking up at him with his lip snared in momentary pause.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Connor asks. “Just to make it…easier on you.”

“No,” Hank says immediately, not moving even though his gaze flickers away, embarrassed. “Just you being here is more than enough,” he adds, gentler this time, and then glances back down at Connor before clearing his throat. “Couldn’t ask for a better distraction.”

Part of Connor knows this isn’t as cut and dry as Hank’s intending it to be, that there’s bound to be another slip-up somewhere, that in the end Hank’s going to blame it on himself and then start right back at square one again. He doesn’t need an auspice in the sky to figure as much, but such is the endless grindstone of a life fueled by bottled vices.

Connor wants to tell Hank he’ll catch him if he stumbles, that he’ll be there to lean on if he gets too tired and needs to rest. It’s the least he can do, after everything Hank’s done. He hopes Hank would believe him.

Instead Connor says, “Speaking of distractions, I’ve still got a few things on today’s to-do list if you want to tag along.”

Hank’s cheeks puff out with a sighing breath as he finally steps away from Connor and uses the toe of his boot to kick the truck’s tire. “In this fuckin’ thing?” he asks. “Maybe not the best commuter vehicle.”

“There wasn’t much I wanted to get done,” Connor says, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets as he stays leaning against the door. “Mostly I needed some cheap clothes since I don’t exactly have anything other than what you see here before your very eyes.”

Hank’s eyes size up the threadbare jeans, Connor’s scuffed rummage sale boots, his own old flannel coat, and the hoodie he’d bought in a South Carolina pharmacy peeking out from underneath. Hidden from view, no doubt, is a pair of Hank’s too-big boxers bunched around Connor’s waist or maybe even nothing at all.

“Uh, yeah,” Hank says with a grave nod. “Guess we need to go scrounge you up some Fruit of the Loom or something.”

Connor laughs, pushing off the truck to tip his face up into the sunshine. “Can you believe I used to own silk boxer shorts?” he asks, shaking his head with his eyes closed. “Had a whole closet full of stuff. It’s all gone now.”

“Where’d it all go?” Hank asks. “You sell it off before you left for Florida? Should’ve left that shit in storage.”

“Sold some things off like my old suits and donated the rest,” Connor says with a shrug, but then his eyes snap back open at that. “Do you know of any secondhand places nearby we can hit on the way through town?”

“Maybe one or two,” Hank says, trying to visualize the shop signs in his head despite a dull ache setting up in the base of his skull. “I thought you were wanting to get in some more driving practice this afternoon.”

“It wouldn’t take me long to pick out a few things,” Connor says, dragging the toe of his boot across the pavement. He worries the edge of his lip for a moment, eyes cast low while he thinks about the best way to stretch an already thin dollar. “Can get that out of the way and then head back out in the truck for a couple hours if you feel up to it.”

Hank blinks at that, stepping forward again to gently tweak his fingers under Connor’s chin. “Hey,” he says when Connor’s brown eyes tip up to meet his, warm and amber-colored in the sunlight. “Don’t worry about me, I’m up for whatever you’re up for. We’ve got the whole day to burn.”

Connor’s smile is small and crooked, the tiny scar on his top lip pulling taut, and Hank doesn’t devote a single conscious thought to the flask in his pocket at the sight.

“Alright,” Connor says, using the back of his hand to gently nudge Hank’s hip on his way around to the other side of the truck. “Let’s go find that Fruit of the Loom.”  
  


* * *  
  


The Salvation Army on Fort Street is primed and ready for Halloween, the front windows painted with pumpkins and festooned with paper skeletons and bats. Somebody has set up an animatronic witch by the door that shrieks every time somebody walks inside the building and Hank pulls a face at the hag’s grotesque rubber mask, hot on Connor’s heels as they wade further into the rows upon rows of clothing racks.

Connor loads up his own arms and then Hank’s, too, with a small mountain of clothes that smell faintly of musty attic and mothballs. He works fast through the few menswear racks and then leads Hank over to the ladies knitwear and coats to look there to boot. When they’re laden down with heavy denim, flannel, some lounge clothes, even a wool sweater or two, Connor dumps it all into one of the dressing rooms and starts working his way through the stack.

Hank sits outside in an empty chair, watching Connor’s socked feet in the gap under the door. Tries not to think about the few times he went shopping with Jennifer and inevitably ends up there anyway, memory leading him back to a dressing room in some department store when she’d been trying on simple white and ivory dresses pulled from the formal rack. She’d been five months pregnant and neither one of them could have afforded a wedding gown.

Hank remembers the swell of her belly under all those white dresses, how she’d ask him to come and do up the zipper in the back from time to time. He’d been quietly afraid but happy, then. They’d known the baby was a boy by that point and had slowly been scribbling down names in the margins of newspapers and grocery lists, all of them but one long-forgotten in the vaults of Hank’s memory now.

The dressing room door swings open but Hank doesn’t hear Connor talking to him until he’s halfway through a rambled thought that ends with, “…I don’t think the whiskering does any favors for my ass.”

Hank looks up, blinking, and peers at the ass in question before clearing his throat. Still pert and rounded, just the right size for him to cup in his hands. Hank’s nearly lost in a different thought again before somebody walks into the store and the animatronic witch cackles, snapping him away from a daydream.

“It looks fine,” Hank says, making Connor arch a dark eyebrow. “Your ass—uh. The jeans, I mean.”

Connor laughs but turns around to face the mirror on the door, tucking his fingers in both pockets to stand there with the line of his shoulders hunched. He and Hank can see each other in their shared reflection but Hank only has eyes for Connor, who plucks at the front of the deep navy cable knit and shrugs.

“You still recognize me when I’m wearing clothes that fit?” Connor asks, catching Hank’s eye in the mirror with a squinty little wink. He’s so precious standing there in his borrowed socks and secondhand clothes that the pang of affection Hank feels throbbing somewhere behind his ribs takes him by surprise.

“I’d take you either way, kid,” Hank says, warm despite its gruffness. His face heats up some and he shoos Connor back into the dressing room toward the rest of the clothes waiting to be tried on. “Go on and show me something else.”

In the end Connor winds up with a few bags bursting at the seams, filled up with the blue sweater and a hefty camel-colored one that he has to cuff at the wrists so it doesn’t slip over his hands. Few pairs of pants that fit well, a couple nicer button-downs, and one shirt patterned in such atrocious mustard and cranberry stripes that Hank wonders if he didn’t put it in the pile himself. Connor adds some pajama pants and another few cotton t-shirts into the mix and briefly waffles over a gently used pea coat, grey and austere, before deciding against it.

“I’ll find something different later,” he tells Hank as they leave the Salvation Army and plod down the sidewalk to the rear lot where Hank had parked the truck. “This one you gave me is perfectly fine for now.”

Hank snorts but lets his mouth curve up into a smile. “You’re not making much of a fashion statement with it.”

“That’s alright,” Connor says airily, swinging his bags of loot along. “I don’t have to be catwalk-ready all the time. If I look too sharp Vogue might call and steal me away from you.”

“Shit,” Hank says through a laugh, helping Connor stow the bags in the back when they load up in the truck. He thuds down in the driver’s seat and feels his flask where it’s resting against his gut, the metal warm and inviting as ever. The clock on the dash reads half past four and the worst of afternoon traffic will be gearing up soon, but Hank knows of another spot outside the city where they can kill some driving time before dark.

“You wanna get something for dinner and take it out to the next practice spot?” he asks Connor as the engine cranks up.

“Let’s do it,” Connor sighs, stretching his long legs out under the dash. He tucks both hands in his hoodie pockets and shivers a bit as the heater slowly warms up again. “Where’s this secret practice spot of yours?”

“You’ll see,” Hank says cryptically, shifting into gear as they roll back out onto the city street and ease past some of the cars parallel parked there. “Think you’ll like the view.”

Once they’ve gotten two Philly cheesesteaks and some drinks for the road, Hank heads northwest out of Detroit and keeps driving until the urban landscape slowly begins turning into suburbs and then something else altogether. They pass schools, playgrounds, strip malls, a cemetery or two. When Connor starts to think the food’s gone cold Hank turns down a short side street and straight into the empty lot of an abandoned car dealership.

They cruise past the derelict teal building, empty save for some old rustbucket chairs and loose trash blown in from the road. Most of the windows have been busted out with rocks and chunks of cinderblock, but the paved asphalt is wide open and stretches long and wide up until the point where it reaches the edge of a scrubby forest. Further beyond that, Connor is surprised to find, is a towering Victorian house still standing despite the test of time.

“How’d you know this was out here?” Connor asks as Hank parks the truck under the shedding branches of a poplar tree. He gets out and walks across a blanket of golden leaves scattered on the concrete, standing there at the edge of the woods to peer at the house, once whitewashed but long since left to weather into decay. There’s a garden trellis and a gazebo hiding there among the trees, and even a stone well with its mouth bricked shut to keep anything from falling in.

“Been here since I was a kid and the old dealership was still in business,” Hank says, coming to a stop at Connor’s side. “House isn’t safe to go inside anymore, but we can sit under the awning there for a few.”

Connor’s nose wrinkles up when he smiles, casting Hank a sidelong look. “You’re a big romantic at heart, you know that?”

“What?” Hank sputters before his eyes narrow, waving Connor off. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“It’s true,” Connor says. “And probably been true since the night we met, now that I think about it. My knight in a shiny chrome Peterbilt.”

“Now listen to yourself, Mr. Romantic,” Hank grumbles, grabbing the takeout bag from Connor’s right hand before stomping down into the woods toward the old gazebo. “C’mon, we’re wasting daylight.”

The brick foundation of the structure is still holding strong even if the wooden upper is slowly rotting away year by year. Connor sits cross-legged in a spot Hank brushes clear of dead leaves and looks up at the framework where swallows and hornets have built nests into the beams for half a century or longer. There’s even a stray owl pellet or two beneath one of the eaves and Hank kicks that away with the toe of his boot, too, the little bones and scraps of fur disappearing among the foliage on the forest floor.

Connor’s sandwich is lukewarm at best now but still fills up the hollow in his empty stomach that had been rumbling since they left Fowler’s office. They eat in companionable silence, watching a pair of chipmunks chase each other around a nearby tree trunk, and only after Hank crumples up his aluminum wrapper in one fist does he stretch his legs out in front of him and says, “Last time I was here I had Cole with me.”

A stray pepper falls out of the corner of Connor’s mouth and makes a _splat_ sound on the aluminum wrapper spread open in his lap. He scrambles to chew and swallow, quickly passing the back of his hand across his mouth before setting the last couple bits of his cheesesteak down. “What were you two doing out here?”

“Scavenger hunt,” Hank says simply. His eyes rove around the surrounding wooded area like he’s following the remembered path of something Connor can’t see. “I made him a map and hid some things out here beforehand for him to find. The big prize was one of those little handheld Nintendo games—you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, his mom wouldn’t buy it for him so I got one for his birthday.”

Hank smiles and chuckles to himself, just a warm sound low in his chest. “That was the year we found out he was sick,” he says, and then the smile flickers and fades away. “Kid played the hell out of that damn thing, though. Money well spent.”

His hand is on his flask and touching the metal warmed by his body heat before he realizes he’d reached for it at all. Connor only looks on, eyes somehow present and faraway all at once.

“Were you and his mom…still together?” he asks, waiting until Hank’s hand draws back out of his jacket empty-handed and curls against his knee in a strained fist.

“For a while,” Hank breathes out. “Divorce wasn’t really official until after he was gone, but we separated when he was three, pushing four.” Hank’s eyes stray back to the chipmunks, still chattering as they scurry up their tree. “Never should’ve gotten hitched in the first place but you live and learn, I guess. Having Cole while he was still here was worth every second of it.”

Hank looks like he wants to say more but draws back, giving a little shake of his head. “I’d better stop while I’m still ahead of myself.”

Connor watches him for a moment, thinking of the little boy in the photographs. Trying and failing to reverse his own life situation, turn the whole thing on its head and see loss from where Hank’s standing as a father without a son.

“Sometimes I forget to even think about my parents,” he says. “Not on purpose—not because I didn’t love them. But just because some days the thought of them simply doesn’t cross my mind. Somehow I was able…to distance part of losing them from myself. Seal it up in a box where I don’t have to look at it all the time.”

Hank gazes at him, weighed down by some unfathomable exhaustion leaking from every pore in his face, like Atlas carrying all the world on his shoulders. Connor doesn’t know the pain he carries, not fully, but he knows he wants to help lighten the load.

“I know you’ll think about Cole every day for the rest of your life,” Connor says quietly. There’s no resentment in it, only the gentle conviction found in a known and accepted truth. The sky is blue, the sun will rise in the east, and Hank Anderson has a hole punched through his heart that won’t ever heal. “I may not have known him, but if you ever want somebody to help remember I’m always here to listen.”

Quiet strings between them, filling up with birdsong and the wind rustling through dry leaves. When Hank moves again he only nods, giving Connor the barest brush of a tired smile.

“You’re too good to me, kid,” he says, heaving out a sigh. “Maybe even too good _for_ me, come to think of it.”

Connor raises and drops one shoulder, feeling a little flustered, like he’d gone and said too much. “Think I’d say the same thing about you.”

“God only knows why,” Hank says with a weak laugh this time, drawing his legs up to stand with a grunt. He tosses his garbage in their takeout bag and then holds it out for Connor to throw his into as well. “You ready to get back behind the wheel?”

“Might as well,” Connor says, rising himself with some ado, and when he’s on his feet again Hank wordlessly snakes an arm around his waist and pulls him against his side there under the crumbling roof of the old gazebo.

Hank’s beard tickles against Connor’s cheek as he holds him there in a tight hug for a moment, only long enough to murmur two words.

“Thank you.”  
  


* * *  
  


It’s nearly dark when they leave the abandoned dealership lot behind, the old Victorian now shadowed and concealed in the forest’s deepening twilight. Connor feels good about his progress, if only a little overwhelmed with the task of remembering so much in such a short span of time. His brain and eyes are strained in a way they haven’t been in quite some time, but Hank’s quiet encouragement and ongoing patience makes it a long day worth its weight in weariness.

The yellow fuel light had come on not too long ago, and with Hank back in the hot seat now he pulls onto the dark road and steers them home toward the city. They take the freeway for a handful of miles and pull off onto an exit with a Flying J travel center advertised there. Diesel prices aren’t cheap but it’ll have to do in a pinch, and when they pull into the lot it’s clear this place isn’t anywhere for families after nightfall.

Somebody’s bass is thumping in the back of a purple Cadillac rolling on 32-inch rims, so loud it makes the loose change in Hank’s cup holder rattle and jump. Not too far from there is an ‘88 Chevy Nova with three guys crowded around the trunk, two passing a hand-rolled cigarette back and forth while the third shows them something Connor can’t quite see from where he’s sitting. A bum with a bottle hidden in a paper sack and a dirty Batman backpack staggers around between the fuel pumps, asking anybody who’ll listen for a dollar, and when he approaches Hank Connor takes the handful of change in the cup holder and gets out to drop it in the outside pocket of his pack.

Satisfied, the bum says his thanks and walks away, necking a long swig off his bottle as he goes. Hank arches an eyebrow and says something Connor can hardly hear over the bass, then points toward the station clerk’s window and speakers louder. “I gotta pay inside, I’ll be right back.”

When Hank’s gone Connor leans against the front grill of the truck, not doing much more than watching the motley group of people crawling out of the woodwork now that the streetlights are on. He feels partially misplaced but also blends in better than he would have in any past life. Lanky nondescript white dude in an oversized coat with a clobbered face—could be a meth head, could be the next Richard Wershe Jr. His only mental complaint is that he suddenly wishes he had a cigarette burning in his hand.

There’s the familiar groan of a diesel engine and Connor watches as another rig pulls into the lot, rolling up to fuel pump opposite the one they’re parking at. Unlike Hank’s bobtail this guy’s towing a full load in his trailer, and Connor spends a few moments idly pondering what it might be before the driver gets out and walks around to the fuel pump and looks up from under the brim of his cowboy hat.

Connor’s heart stops, clenches, and then starts beating in a frenzy. The man’s face is unfamiliar but his eyes still do a slow sweep from Connor’s face down to the scuffed toes of his boots. This isn’t the same man, it’s not even the same truck, but Connor feels like he’s going to vomit pure acid and stumbles around to the other side of Hank’s Peterbilt to collapse on the passenger’s running board.  

He hasn’t felt this awful in days and somehow that makes it all the more potent, like the sudden influx of adrenaline and fear is making him deaf and blind to everything going on around him. The bass in the Cadillac is still shaking the whole station and Connor swallows thickly while his organs vibrate sickeningly around his bones.  

When Hank comes back outside Connor doesn’t even realize he’s standing there at his feet until he feels a warm hand on the back of his neck. He jumps, startled, but Hank is already leaning over close to Connor’s ear, a grave expression drawn across his features. “What’s wrong?”

Connor looks up, ashen-faced, and shakes his head. Hank’s close enough that the loose pieces of hair around his face are skimming Connor’s brow. “Man in the cowboy hat,” he tries to say, gesturing weakly at the man at the pump. “I just…the night you found me, he was wearing—the hat.”

Hank has already torn around the front of the truck to the pump and taken the other driver by the front of his coat before Connor even knows what’s happening. They slam into the side of the man’s trailer, his cowboy hat crumpling behind his head before Hank bars a forearm under his chin and it falls into a dirty puddle on the ground.

“Did you fucking touch him?” Hank says, dangerously low, while the man’s beady eyes bug out of his face and his boot heels scuff the pavement. “Give me one good fucking reason why I shouldn’t tear your head off and shit down your throat right here and now.”

“I don’t,” the guy starts to say, hands clawing uselessly at Hank’s arm. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about—”

“Wrong answer,” Hank hisses, and then Connor is on him from the other side, yanking at his jacket and yelling things Hank can’t even hear until the blood stops beating in his ears.

“Stop it, Hank!” Connor keeps saying, trying and failing to pull him off, but for all his strength it’s like Hank’s bones have turned to steel and melded with the ground. “That’s not him, it’s not the same guy!”

The Cadillac’s bass music has cut out and people are starting to stare. Even the bum has set his bottle aside to look on, mouth hanging open while he waits for whatever comes next. Hank goes still but keeps the other trucker shoved against his rig, who pants in short bursts of hot air while he looks between Hank and Connor with a wild expression.

“Connor,” Hank says, eyes dropping from the man’s face to stare at nothing on the ground. “What are you saying?”

“That’s not him,” Connor says weakly for what feels like the dozenth time, still with a fistful of Hank’s coat in his grasp. “I saw his hat and panicked because…I— _because_.” He can’t make the other words come out, not right here, but it seems to be enough because Hank takes a step back and releases the other man so he staggers and nearly falls to one knee on the ground.

“How do you know it’s not him?” Hank asks, looking thoughtful with the tip of his tongue pressed into the corner of his mouth.

Connor swallows, blinking fast, and wants to collapse. “He still has both eyes.”

“Oh,” Hank says.

“Seems we’ve had some sort of misunderstanding, sir,” he adds stiffly, reaching down to pick up the man’s rumpled cowboy hat before extending it to him. “Sorry about that. I thought you were somebody else.”

“Are you goddamn fuckin’ insane!?” the man asks, snatching his hat back and scrambling up and away from Hank so fast he nearly trips over the fuel pump still wedged inside his truck. “I should call the police!”

“We’re in inner Detroit,” Hank says dryly, looking exhausted all over again. “It’ll be at least an hour before they show up.” The other man stands there, visibly vibrating with what must be a mixture of burning anger and fear, and watches while Hank reaches into his pocket and finds his wallet to pull out a few bills.

“Put that toward a new hat,” he sighs, stepping forward to set the money against the windshield, and then goes back over to the gas pump before starting to fill up the truck. The onlookers around them start to go back to their business and walk away, but Connor has two handfuls of his own hair and both eyes trained on the side of Hank’s face.

“What are you doing?” he cries, voice only barely contained enough to keep it from being a shout.

Hank only glances over and grunts, nodding toward the fuel ticker. He has no qualms with reaching into his pocket and pulling out his flask this time, unscrewing the cap and tipping his head back for a drink. “Getting the diesel I paid for,” he says, not even hissing around the burn of alcohol. “What’s it look like?”

Next door the other driver has snatched the money off his hood and hurdled back into the truck. It starts up and squeals out of the lot, trailer and all, leaving black tread marks there on the pavement where the eighteen wheeler did its best to peel out back onto the highway.

Connor watches the truck until it’s out of sight and wonders if the police are going to kick down Hank’s front door later tonight. “I thought you were going to kill him,” he says, arms hanging at his sides now. “Maim him in the very least.”

“I would have if it was the same son of a bitch who laid a hand on you,” Hank says, plain as day, eyes watching the number on the fuel pump climb higher. His whole profile looks looser, less rigid, easy and forgiving ever since he gave in and had a drink. “Would’ve been pretty damn easy, actually.”

Behind them another stereo starts up again as the Cadillac, too, finally thumps its way out of the Flying J’s lot. The driver taps the horn as they pass and Hank waves back without looking.

“You didn’t even wait for me to explain,” Connor says tiredly.

“Guess I’ve developed something of a hair trigger when it comes to you,” Hank says, eyes finally swiveling to meet Connor’s under the fluorescent gas station lights. The blue there burns with some new intensity Connor hasn’t found in Hank’s eyes before and the sight makes a jolt of something hot and wild pass through him.

It’s a cold evening in Detroit, frigid enough that there will probably be ice on the windshields to start Halloween morning tomorrow, but Connor has the unshakeable, gut-deep feeling he won’t be bothered to notice the chill tonight.

“Let’s get on home,” Hank says when he’s finished fueling up the truck. “The neighbor kid hasn’t checked in on Sumo since a couple hours after lunch.”

He doesn’t breathe a word about their most recent incident or pry for an explanation about the hat or the eyes the whole way back. Which would be a relief, Connor thinks, if only he wasn’t waiting for Hank to ask.  
  
  
  
  


The rest of the neighborhood is lit up with orange lights and a few flickering strobes when they pull back into Hank’s driveway. Connor can see that the house across the street has a plastic skeleton half-buried in their front flower bed, its untimely demise marked by a styrofoam headstone and a fake lily clasped in its bony hands. Only the lone pumpkin on Hank’s stoop makes humble note of the incoming holiday, faceless and without a candle burning inside, but it’s enough to at least make the house look lived-in. Connor wonders what Hank would say if he went out with a steak knife and a soup spoon and carved it tomorrow.

Turns out Hank’s a mind reader. “Are you gonna carve that thing?” he asks Connor as they make their way to the front door, Sumo already bouncing eagerly on the other side now that he’s heard the truck pull in the drive.

“Maybe,” Connor says, shifting some of his new clothes around in their bags as Hank twists his key in the lock. “Depends on if you want to help me.”

Hank huffs out a little laugh, glancing at Connor from the corner of his eye as he walks in the house. “Yeah, okay,” he says, much to Connor’s surprise. “We can do that.”

With Sumo prancing around their feet Hank doesn’t bother with taking his boots off at the door and goes straight into the kitchen, keys clattering there on the table they’d eaten breakfast at earlier that morning. There’s still a plastic jug of maple syrup sitting out and Connor itches to put it away in the cupboard but only watches Hank open the refrigerator and stare hard at the beers in his vegetable crisper before shutting the door again with a low swear.

“I’m gonna turn on the game and take a load off,” he announces, shrugging out of his denim jacket and draping it haphazardly over the back of a kitchen chair. He tugs the sleeves of his henley up to the elbows and Connor’s eyes go straight to Hank’s forearms while he bends to pop the top off Sumo’s dog food bin and fill up his bowl with kibble.  
  
“You got anything you wanted to do or anywhere you wanted to be tonight?” Hank asks, going to tug at his boot laces now that he’s already bent over. “Car’s all yours if you want it.”

“Think I’d rather stay in with you,” Connor says, slowly shedding his own coat and looking down at the Salvation Army bags at his feet. “I should go ahead and put these through the washer, get the old lady smell off them.”

Hank smiles and wrinkles his nose, dropping a quick kiss that lands somewhere above Connor’s eyebrow as he passes on his way to the living room with his boots undone. “Knock yourself out babe. You kinda smell like old lady, too.”

“I do not!” Connor calls after him, trying not to crack a smile when Hank’s answering cackle drifts behind him in his wake. Even so, Connor sorts his haul into meager little piles and throws the first load of darks and jeans in, adding in the laundry soap while Hank’s basketball game blares from the TV.

He stands there with the washing machine lid open even as sudsy water starts pouring from the little spout at the top, waterfalling into the clothes. The scene at the Flying J replays in his mind on a loop but there’s no easy way to walk into the living room on a Tuesday evening and simply tell Hank what had happened that night—or what would have happened, worse yet, if Hank and Sumo hadn’t been there when they were.

The thought sends a chill through Connor, grim enough to make his teeth grit and clench together. He shuts the washing machine lid and closes the laundry closet doors, softly padding back down the carpeted hall in his socks to tell Hank he’s going to take the first shower until he gets halfway and stops. The audience on the televised game is screaming and Hank mumbles something at the screen himself, clearly irritated with the way the play is panning out.

There’s no reason to give Hank a full itinerary of his evening routine, Connor decides. Beyond that, he’d be telling a little white lie if he said he was taking a shower because when he fetches his towel off the rack on the door and turns the lock behind him, he immediately goes to the tub and quickly rinses it out before stoppering the drain.

It doesn’t take long for steam to start filling the small bathroom. Connor tries to flip on the overhead vent but it no longer works, probably broken long ago and something Hank never bothered to fix. He listens to the water splash against the ceramic as he steps out of his clothes, toes already cold against the chilled tile floor.

The mirror above the sink is slowly beginning to fog up but Connor contemplates his reflection for a moment, leaning in close to press at the worst of the bruising around his left eye socket. It doesn’t throb or ache much anymore unless he really digs a finger into the brassy plum but there’s still a shadow of blood pooled around his iris from the vessel hemorrhaging. It makes him look like he’s always just finished crying, the white of his eye gone tender and pinkish.

Connor touches his jaw, feels the faint scratch of five o’clock shadow it took him two days to grow. He needs to shave and makes a mental note to do that once he’s done in the bath. Stepping back, he studies the rest of his reflection below his chest—pale and narrow-hipped, a soft stomach that creases when he folds in on himself, nipples gone hard when they hit the cool air, the wispy hair that starts below his navel and travels south until it turns into a wiry thatch of curls he hasn’t had the time or wherewithal to do anything with in months. There’s the faint mark of a fading tattoo by his right hip bone he hardly even cares to notice anymore.

Hank hadn’t seen him, really, the other night in the truck cab. He’d touched and kissed and groped, but they hadn’t had the time or room to look at each other beneath their clothes. Connor thinks about Hank’s hands and eyes on his naked body and shivers involuntarily, a twinge of desire running straight down to his cock. That thought leads him back over to the tub, hissing against the scalding water as he eases down into the filling bath one inch at a time.

The water laps over Connor’s thighs and low on his belly as he makes quick work of soaping up a cloth and washing himself, running the suds over his body and paying more careful attention around his neck and behind his ears. He dips his head under the faucet and lets the water run down his back before scrubbing some of Hank’s cheap shampoo into his hair, partway wishing it was somebody else’s fingers against his scalp instead of his own.

When he’s finished he turns the water down to the barest trickle and sinks back down into the bath, letting the balmy heat soak some of the tension from the muscles in his back and shoulders. Connor closes his eyes and tries to relax but his mind keeps shamelessly wandering off to places where Hank’s hands are on him again, hot and needy, touching everywhere. They’d both slept in Hank’s bed the night before but it’d been a silently intimate thing without fervor; they’d gotten up from the sofa, shared a shy, passing kiss in the doorway, and turned down the bed before climbing in. Hank clicked the light off and it’d been quiet, maybe a little distant with them on their respective sides of the bed, but Connor had felt warm and safe, and that was what mattered above all else. He’d slept soundly and in the morning Hank had still been there when he opened his eyes, gently snoring with the blanket tangled around his waist.

Here and now, Connor runs a palm down the smooth slickness of his belly and cups himself to see what happens, pressing the heel of his hand against his groin. The response is swift and he feels his cock twitch against his palm, filling up even more as he takes it in hand and strokes once from base to tip. His cockhead is already flushed rosy from both a rush of blood and the steaming bath and Connor thumbs over it again and again as he slowly works himself into a state, bottom lip caught between his teeth and eyes clamped tight.

Far too soon he realizes he wants more than this and the thought sends a thrill through him. The door is locked but Hank is just down the hall within earshot, busy with the basketball game but perfectly capable of hearing Connor’s sloshing and sighing whimpers in the bathroom if he just so happened to hit the mute button—and well, that’s a risk worth taking. Drawing his knees up in the tub, Connor sinks lower in the water and reaches down between his legs to prod around the tight pucker of his hole.

He wants to cry in frustration, thinking back to the memory of throwing his small toy collection away in the dumpster right before he and Markus cut ties and flew to Florida. It’d almost been harder to part with than his clothes or his car, and Christ, what he’d give right now to have his old vibrator shoved up his ass while he fucked his fist with a handful of conditioner.

When the first finger slips inside Connor moans high in his chest and tries to relax, letting it sink as deep as his wrist will bend to accommodate him. It’s nowhere near enough and the angle’s not the best, and Connor toes the faucet off with his foot as he presses his sole against the tile to get more leverage. He gently works himself over for a minute and then adds his ring finger alongside his middle one, crooking them up at an angle inside his body. His arm is already faintly cramping and the stretch is painful in an awkward, cumbersome way, but then he curls his fingers up toward his groin in just the right spot and—

“F- _fuck_ ,” he hisses, heel sliding against the shower wall as a burst of pleasure blooms from that hidden sweet spot. Connor presses his fingers there again and lets out the tiniest sob as warmth radiates again, so good and still not enough. He’s rock hard but he doesn’t touch his cock where it’s straining against his belly beneath the surface of the water, focused instead on stroking inside himself even if it feels like he’s about to piss himself. Connor knows better, bearing down on his own hand through the oddly familiar sensation, and keeps chasing that feeling for what feels like forever until it finally tips him over the edge.

He comes with a strangled half-shout of something deaf to his own ears but it’s loud enough to echo off the bathroom walls as he comes in silken hot stripes across his stomach and chest. The bathwater has gone tepid but Connor milks it for all it’s worth, only letting his fingers slip from his hole when he’s shivering and trembling with the shock of it all.

Three knuckles rapping fast and hard on the door makes him sit up fast enough to see stars.

“Connor?” Hank’s voice rumbles through the thin wood. “You okay in there?”

“Yes—yes!” Connor says, maybe a little too quickly. He quickly wipes his torso clean and stands, water running down his legs while he scrambles to pull the drain stopper and get a towel in hand.

There’s silence on the other side of the door for a long moment and then Hank’s voice is back, pinched somewhere in the middle. “I thought I heard you call my name.”

Connor’s stomach drops in a free-fall when he realizes what happened. “Oh, I was just…looking for the shaving cream,” he says, eyes swerving right to where it sits next to the bathroom sink in plain sight. “I found it, though.”

When he opens the bathroom door he doesn’t expect to be standing nose to nose with Hank—or nose to eyes, rather, since they’re so close Connor could lean forward an inch and kiss Hank’s chin. He sways there in the doorway with one hand gripping the towel around his waist for dear life, the other come up to splay against Hank’s stomach so he doesn’t collapse into him like a tower of falling bricks.

Hank’s fingers come up to hold Connor’s elbow, steadying him in place. He’s warm, too close, and still smells like autumn afternoon and the last few bottom notes of his fading aftershave. He doesn’t say anything but Connor feels those sharp eyes wick across his skin like a blade.

“I need to borrow a razor,” he says lamely. “I keep forgetting to buy a new one.”

“Old pack of disposables under the sink,” Hank grunts, not moving for a beat or two. When he speaks the faint smell of alcohol lingers on his breath and Connor knows he’s being sized up, that Hank’s surveying the damp curl plastered to his forehead, the lines of his collarbone and slope of his shoulders now that they’re not hidden under bulky clothing.

Hank steps back and clears his throat, already halfway down the hall when he speaks again. “I’m probably calling it a night when the game’s over here in a few.”

Connor slumps in the doorway when he’s gone, legs still a touch weak in the knees from his orgasm. He closes his eyes and mouths a silent curse to himself, wishing he’d had the courage and resolve to take Hank by the shirtfront just then and ask for what he wanted. Demanded it, even, and been all the more rewarded when Hank’s thick fingers pressed into his body all too easily to find it’d been waiting for him.

Connor’s soft cock twitches again where it’s pressed against the soft terry cloth. He draws himself back into the bathroom with a sigh and finishes up his nighttime routine with as much frail dignity he can scrounge together, not quite meeting his own eye in the mirror while he shaves and brushes his teeth. He gets dressed in another pair of borrowed sweats and a t-shirt now that his new pajamas are still running through the wash and walks out into the living room just as Hank’s getting up to click the television off.

“I’m not ready to turn it in just yet,” Connor says, taking the remote from Hank’s hand when he wordlessly passes it over. “You don’t have to stay up for my sake.”

Hank smiles, nudging Connor’s hip as he passes on his way around the coffee table. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he says, letting out a wide yawn and pressing a fist into the small of his back while he stretches. “Come to bed when you get tired, you won’t bother me.”

Connor nods and drops down into the warm spot Hank left on the sofa, drawing his legs up to tuck his feet underneath himself. When Hank’s disappeared down the hallway again he flips through a few channels, finally landing on some cooking show competition he doesn’t even really watch. Sumo sighs from his spot by the radiator, sprawled out in his bed without a care in the world, but Connor’s eyes stay on the flashing TV screen while his thoughts dally elsewhere.

Turns out there’s a lot to think about when you stop moving long enough to let your mind settle in on itself. Connor’s been wading non-stop through rough waters for so long he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to simply pause and be still. And yet the warmth and modest softness of Hank’s small house cocoons around him while his mind works, somehow more reassuring in its embrace than any place Connor’s ever lived in since he walked out of his parents’ house for the last time twenty years ago.

To think he’s only known Hank Anderson for a single week in this entire backdrop of a lifetime.

Seven days to build the world seems unlikely, but maybe seven days is all you need to build a home.  
  


* * *  
  


When Hank opens his eyes it’s spring again, the orchard burst into bloom with a million pink and white flowers. The air smells sweet, crisp, and full of promised life.

It takes him longer to find Cole this time. For once the kid isn’t right underfoot with his gap-toothed smile and Hank’s almost verging on worried for a moment despite this being a dream—although once he hears the low creaking of natural rope around applewood he knows just where to look.

The swing is on one of the older trees at the farthest reach of the property, the trunk gnarled with age and what might’ve once been a chance lightning strike. It’d never produced fruit quite as well as the younger trees and so Hank’s grandfather had let him tie a plank to some rope and they’d strung the old swing up themselves one afternoon late in the summer of 1992.

Cole sits on it now, going higher and higher with each kick of his legs and the occasional push from a familiar helping hand. Blossoms flutter down from the tree above them both as he swings, some of them falling into Cole’s hair and on his jacket before collecting like snow on the ground. Connor catches one in his palm and peers at it before he seems to notice Hank’s arrival, pocketing the delicate flower away like he’s keeping it for a rainy day.

“Dad, look how high I can go when Connor pushes me!” Cole shouts, body almost parallel with the ground at the peak of each swing. How he moves through the air is surreal, almost otherworldly, and Hank wants to pluck Cole from the sky and hold him tight so he doesn’t ever leave again. Instead he lets this figment of his son go on playing, content enough to listen to him laugh, and goes to stand by Connor now that they’ve finally come face to face inside the borders of this hidden corner of Hank’s mind.

Connor’s still fresh-faced and unburdened with the real world’s beatings here, remarkably handsome in the springtime sunlight filtering down through the apple blossoms. He laughs while he pushes Cole on the swing and looks more like a beauty torn from the canvas of an old master work than anything Hank’s ever been allowed to have or hold onto. Connor’s eyes light up when Hank approaches, mouth curved into a small smile full of some secret Hank hasn’t been clued in on just yet.

“You never told me how beautiful it is here,” Connor says, giving Cole one more strong push before they step away to mingle under the tree’s gentle shade.

“That’s because it doesn’t exist anymore,” Hank tells him, reaching up to tap a forefinger against his temple. “Cept in here, I guess.”

Connor looks at Hank with a strange expression but doesn’t comment on the fact. “At least we’re both dressed the part this time,” he says, gesturing between them, and when Hank looks down he sees they’re both barefoot on the new spring grass.

“This is a little fuckin’ much, even for some sad sack of a romantic like me,” Hank mumbles to himself, even if he enjoys the feeling of cool ground under his feet. Connor laughs and that sound is the realest detail about this dream, the one thing that still exists in both Hank’s living and sleeping worlds.

“Walk with me,” Connor says, holding out a hand. “Cole will be safe here.”

Hank blinks at Connor’s extended hand but then takes it, almost indulgently wrapping his fingers around the soft warmth of Connor’s palm. He can do whatever he wants, he tells himself; nobody’s here to see except for him.

“Why do I keep showing up here with you and my kid running around?” Hank muses as they stroll along, fingers threaded together. “Not that I’m complaining about it, I just—I don’t know. Guess it’s better to not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“You love this orchard,” Connor says. “Why wouldn’t you come back to visit?”

“That’s true,” Hank sighs, trying to overlook his frustration with the fact that he can’t squeeze a straight answer out of Connor even if all this is happening inside his own head. “Color me surprised I keep finding you here, though.”

Connor hums at that, swinging Hank’s hand a little between them. “I guess you want me here,” he says simply. “If you didn’t I wouldn’t have shown up otherwise.”

There’s a peal of laughter behind them and Hank turns just in time to watch as Cole takes a flying leap off the swing and soars through the air. He lands perfectly on both feet, delighted and unharmed, and runs back to the swing to do it all over again.

“He’s a good kid,” Connor says fondly, and that’s more than enough to make Hank’s heart ache. He wishes Connor knew Cole, for real, in waking life. He wonders how things could have been, or would have been, if Cole were still alive when Connor fell into his life. Or if their paths ever would’ve crossed stars at all.

A light wind moves through the trees and makes them dance in the daylight, soft-focus and dreamlike as it all is. The curls on top of Connor’s head rustle in the breeze and flop against his forehead, and when he catches Hank staring from the corner of his eye a dimple deepens on his cheek and he leans in to steal a soft kiss.

That, too, feels real at least. Hank’s eyes drift shut as he takes in the smell of the blooming trees, the softness of Connor’s mouth, how warm and solid he is when Hank pulls him closer into his arms.

When they pull apart Connor is holding out his palm with that single saved apple blossom cradled in it. He curls his hand back into a gentle fist and Hank quirks an eyebrow but taps it like he’s awaiting a magic trick, and when Connor opens the hand again there’s a familiar blue paper flower there instead.

“Peony for your thoughts?” he says. Hank’s skin prickles with the sense of déjà vu turned on its head, and just as he outstretches his fingers to take it he blinks and opens his eyes to cool, pitch dark.

He’s propped on his side in bed, facing the nightstand where his old digital clock reads 2:42 a.m. He’s been asleep for just about four hours and lays there long enough to watch the numbers flip over again before he reaches up to twist on the bedside lamp. Turning again to look at the other side of the mattress he finds it cold and empty, though there’s a little nested spot there where the blankets had been pulled back and Connor must’ve laid down for a spell at some point in the night.

Hank presses a spread hand into the sheets there as he sits up. It’s not until he swings his legs around the side of the bed and blearily looks at the clock again that he notices the crepe paper and pipe cleaner flower left on the night table next to his reading glasses.

Quickly looking around the room again produces no signs of Connor or anybody else. Hank feels exposed somehow, off balance, heart pounding high in his throat—is he awake or is he still dreaming? He hesitates to even touch the fragile blue peony, gone a bit threadbare now after too many days of living in coat pockets, but takes the fuzzy stem between two fingers and brings it with him as he walks out of the bedroom and into the dark house.

Hank doesn’t check the spare bedroom or, God help him, the one that used to belong to Cole. When he passes the laundry closet the doors are open and most of Connor’s new clothes have been hung on plastic hangers or folded, the front of the dryer still warm to the touch. The living room is empty now, the TV screen black and remote set neatly back on the coffee table, but Hank sees a faint light in the kitchen and eases around the corner to find Connor at the kitchen table with only the single bulb above the sink to see by.

He’s got a steaming cup of something in front of him and Sumo’s head on his thigh, the big dog puffing happily as Connor rubs around his ears. Only Connor looks up when Hank walks in, the dim lighting making the dark bruises under his eyes seem deeper than usual.

“Hope I didn’t wake you up,” he says modestly, picking up a paper tab on a tea bag and steeping it up and down in Hank’s old yellow mug with a barely legible _Big Hug_ still emblazoned on it. “Couldn’t sleep. I really had to dig around to find the chamomile.”

“I didn’t even know we had any,” Hank says with a sleep-rough snort, tiredly scrubbing across his face as he takes a seat at the kitchen table to Connor’s left. He lays the paper flower down near Connor’s mug and both their eyes settle on it for a long moment, the only movement in the room coming from the curls of vapor still rolling off Connor’s drink and then, eventually, Sumo climbing to his feet with a groan and lumbering out of the kitchen to find his warm spot by the radiator again.

Hank draws in a deep breath, still looking at the peony like it has all the world’s answers, and maybe it does. He doesn’t ask how it got on the nightstand because they both already know. He only wishes he’d been less than a whole asshole the last time it was offered and kept it then. He wonders, vaguely and bizarrely paranoid, if Connor can see into his dreams.

“I want to hear about what happened,” he says, quiet, eyes skirting around the edge of Connor’s face before their gazes meet somewhere in the middle. “That night. Before I pulled you into the rig.”

Connor’s hand tightens around his mug, lashes lowering as he peers down into the milky liquid. He brings the tea up to his mouth for a sip and then says, softly, “There’s not much to tell.”

“There’s enough that it’s worth telling, Con,” Hank says, firmer than before. He doesn’t want to nudge Connor back into the memory of something traumatic, but then again it feels too important to keep pushing under the rug. It feels like something he needs to know for them both. “I don’t ever want to put on a repeat performance of whatever the fuck happened last night. You—you in some kinda panic about something and Christ, I didn’t even stop or care to think twice.”

Connor’s jaw is set, eyes wavering somewhere on the kitchen wall. “I didn’t sic you on that man,” he says. “You can’t put that back on me.”

“No,” Hank says, trying not to bristle with the beginnings of irritation, “but I need to know what set you off so it doesn’t catch me off guard again. You looked like you’d seen a fucking ghost. After everything, you and me….”

Hank trails off, tongue feeling too thick in his mouth, sweat already gathering between his shoulders while words fumble past his teeth. “We can’t just sit here and let that lie. You know you can trust me with—whatever it is. Anything, Connor. And maybe I can’t fix what happened but God, I want to do what I fucking can to help if you ever need it.”

Hank falls silent and the only sound for a few beats in the refrigerator motor humming to life. Connor doesn’t say anything at first, though he does set his mug aside and reach out to lay a ceramic-warmed palm against the back of Hank’s clammy hand before sliding the other beneath it, cradling Hank’s hand there between his.

“I hope this isn’t pity for me sitting here running my mouth,” Hank says with a feeble laugh, though he squeezes the smaller hand underneath his palm.

Connor stares at their hands where they’re pressed against the tabletop while the line of his throat works in place. “I think I trust you more than anybody, Hank,” he says at last, and then lets out a shaky sort of sighing laugh of his own, looking up at Hank with clear brown eyes. “He tried to kill me with his bare hands. He would have if I hadn’t fallen out of the truck when I did.”

Hank’s expression turns grim, mouth pressed into a thin line. “You’re stronger than you think,” he says, not wanting to think about any other alternative. “You got away.”

“He had the knife,” Connor says, gently pulling his hands back now that they’re starting to sweat, and if he closes his eyes he can remember the glint of that blade in the shadowed cab almost perfectly. “I said I’d suck his cock for a twenty but apparently he was looking for more than that without the price tag. Told me to lay down in the back and face the wall.”

Hank can feel his blood pressure rising just listening to Connor talk about it. “What did you do?”

“Fought back,” Connor says, blinking his eyes back open. “But I fell and he cornered me in the front and started wailing on me. For a minute I just laid there and took it, you know? Could’ve been easy to let it all happen like that. But then I—I guess there was a point where my body took over. Fight or flight, and I couldn’t exactly go anywhere.”

“He wouldn’t stop,” Connor says blandly, looking at nothing in particular. “So I did the only thing I could think of and went for his eyes.”

A muscle in Hank’s face twitches involuntarily. “You said,” he starts, clenching his jaw. “Last night you said he still had both eyes.”

“I couldn’t say for sure whether it’s still there or not,” Connor says, rolling one shoulder. He looks far-off while he speaks about it, not lost but momentarily deserted in a place Hank can’t picture. “I pushed my thumb into the socket until something popped. He screamed and stopped beating me long enough that I could open the door and roll out. That’s all I know.”

Hank pinches his temples between thumb and forefinger, shaking his head. “I wish we knew something,” he says. “Anything to identify the guy other than a cowboy hat and a red truck. Probably a thousand of those guys working out of Texas alone. People like that just don’t stop being the scum of the fucking earth—life on the road is forgiving like that, if you want to make yourself or somebody else disappear.”

The clock on the stove turns over to 3 a.m. and Connor takes a long drink of chamomile, looking far too small in Hank’s borrowed clothes despite how familiar the sight’s become. “I lost everything I had, or almost everything,” he says, sounding so broken that it makes Hank’s chest ache. “And you already know how terrifying starting over is because you’ve been through something so much worse.”

Connor sets his mug down too hard and laughs, high and reedy, before Hank realizes there are tears shining in his eyes. “I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you, Hank,” he rasps. “For so many fucking reasons. I owe you everything and I’m scared shitless about how I’d give it all to you if you just asked.”

He doesn’t even try to bite back the sob rising in his chest this time, and when the legs of Hank’s chair scrape across the floor an inch or two to reach out and get a handful of Connor’s shirt he comes willingly, all but falling into Hank’s lap there in the dimly lit kitchen.

Their sizes make this more awkward than easy but Hank holds Connor tight anyway, feeling Connor’s arms weakly come up to loop around his neck while he dips his head to cry against Hank’s shoulder. It goes on like that, two crude shapes jammed together out of want and desperation, Hank running a hand up and down the thin fabric on Connor’s back while his lungs hitch and burn.

“You’re alright, honey,” he says, tipping his head to press his mouth somewhere against the ridge of Connor’s collarbone. “Shh, you’re alright now.”

Connor’s breathing begins to soften and level out eventually even if the whole shoulder of Hank’s sleep shirt is soaked. He stays there with his head bowed, sniffling lightly as Hank’s fingers tiptoe up the ridge of his spine until he’s cupping the back of Connor’s neck with a broad hand.

“This isn’t about what I’d ask for,” Hank says, thumb skimming under Connor’s ear. “Never was. The only thing that matters is what you need.”

Connor draws in a shuddering breath and nods, finally lifting his head enough that he can brush a kiss along Hank’s jaw. His hands briefly tighten around Hank’s neck before loosening again into the silent admission of what must be self-release, and when their eyes finally meet Hank knows right then that he’s gone and done for.

“You told me you’d take me home and fuck me,” Connor says, so plainly it makes the kitchen spin a little in Hank’s peripheral vision. “We’re home now.”

“We are,” Hank rasps, voice gone low and gravelly in his throat. One of his hands is on Connor’s thigh, absently stroking the seam along his hip there, their skin burning even through layers of cotton. “I want to do so much more than just fuck you, sweetheart. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Connor breathes out, clinging to Hank like a vice while he squirms in his lap. “God, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since we walked through the front door. I—I need you.”

“Right now?” Hank hums, grinning a little, and Connor looks half-wild with lust and his eyes still bloodshot and red from crying.

“Right now,” Connor says, taking Hank’s face between his hands to kiss him hard before murmuring there against his lips. “Please, Hank.”

Hank tips his forehead into Connor’s and closes his eyes. “Anything you want,” he says, hands sliding up Connor’s sides while he tries to catch his breath long enough to figure out their next move. “Anything.”

He considers asking Connor to get down and walk with him but in the end it’s worth any pulled muscles he may or may not live long enough to regret in the morning and also the tiny squeak of surprise Connor lets out when Hank gets his arms up under his ass and stands, hoisting him up against his waist. Connor scrambles to wrap his legs around Hank’s middle in a reflex and Hank doesn’t waste any time with getting them back to the bedroom, the both of them holding on like their lives depend on it.

“Do you have—?” Connor asks, already trying to yank Hank’s shirt up his back with enough fervor that he doesn’t even finish his thought.

Hank only nods, meeting Connor’s eyes with an unspoken answer of _yes_ , striding back through the doorway and going straight to the bed where he eases Connor down into the pale circle of golden light pooling through unmade sheets. Connor lets out a tiny sound as he scoots back and parts his legs, and that’s all the invitation Hank needs to slide in between them.

He sets the pace for their kisses, slowing down whenever Connor speeds up, soothing a hand up his side and gently holding his chin in place long enough that Connor will stop and really look at him with clear, glassy eyes.

“Not so fast, now,” Hank tells him, dropping a kiss to the corner of Connor’s mouth and then above the little split in his brow. “It’s just you and me, alright? Nothing to do and nowhere to be. You and me.”

Connor nods and lowers his eyes, tongue darting out to wet along his bottom lip. “You and me,” he echoes back, laughing a little breathlessly as he reaches down to touch the hem of Hank’s shirt, twisting the soft material between his fingers. “I just want to see you so bad I can hardly help myself.”

“Well come on, then,” Hank chuckles, easing back some so Connor can work his shirt up over his back and shoulders. His hair falls into a fluffy mess around his face when they pull it over his head, the waves there still the slightest bit damp from his shower earlier in the night. He smells like clean soap and _Hank_ and Connor is nothing short of intoxicated by the sight hovering above him.

Connor’s eyes widen, taking in everything he’s never seen before with his fingers braced against the freckled round of Hank’s shoulder, all the tattoos suddenly burst into life now that he can decipher them in the low light. Birds in flight above his hip bones, handwritten coordinates on the inside of his bicep, the image of a snake swallowing its own tail under Connor’s hand where it’s resting on hank’s shoulder. There’s so much more than he can truly make out from this angle, though, and he sits up fast enough that Hank drops into the sheets with a little hoot and an _oof._

He rolls over onto his back and growls when Connor swings a leg over to straddle his hips, sitting there like they’ve done this a thousand times before. Hank brings his hands up to brace around Connor’s thighs while he explores with gentle fingers, touching the time-faded piece under Hank’s chest hair and then the single name written in black ink just above his heart.

“My whole left side is for Cole,” Hank says softly, clearing his throat before he raises his arm for Connor to get a better look. “Gladiolus, blue salvia, purple hyacinth, marigold—all means something, but hell if I can remember half the time anymore.”

Connor touches the floral piece and knows that’s a half-truth, that if Hank knows the names of so many flowers he surely hasn’t forgotten their meanings, but that’s a conversation for another time. The hyacinth and salvia sprawl up his ribs, wicked and beautiful like a fresh bruise, and Connor somehow knows without asking that part of the reason Hank put them there was because of how much it would hurt.

Shyly, carefully, he scoots further down Hank’s thighs until he can bow over and press his mouth to a cluster of marigold, just gathering a taste of clean, faintly salty skin where his tongue dips out into the stain of orange ink. Hank doesn’t flinch but his skin twitches just the barest bit when his left pec jumps, not used to such a sensitive touch there.

“They’re beautiful,” Connor says, sitting up again as his fingers splay through the hair on Hank’s chest to keep balance. “You’re beautiful, too.”

“You got a thing for ink, huh?” Hank rasps, smooth tenor from before replaced with something gruffer now. He doesn’t quite meet Connor’s eye, sparse lashes cast low and away for the moment. “You got any of your own hiding somewhere I haven’t seen yet?”

Connor flushes in the pale light, that dimple under his eye deepening as his face screws up in a silly smile. “Just one I got back in college,” he says. “I’ll show you later.”

For now he ducks his head but keeps smiling as he pulls his shirt off and lets it drop into the blankets. Hank’s eyes rove over the smoothness of Connor’s chest with the finest dusting of soft hair, all the moles standing out like dark constellations thrown against pale skin, but he doesn’t see any tattoo.

Connor takes a steadying breath and raises up on his knees just long enough to loosen the drawstring on his borrowed pajama pants and pulls the waistband down, revealing the dark thatch of curly hair even though he’s still decent for the moment. Hank’s mouth fills with saliva at the thought of Connor’s rosy little cock hidden under the fabric and he can’t stand to lay here and look without touching anymore.

“Come here,” he says, reaching out to take one of Connor’s wrists in hand, pulling him further back down the bed until they’re lying pressed together, chest to chest. Hank groans at the sudden contact and the soft heat radiating from Connor’s crotch where it’s flush against the junction between his hip and thigh, already gently rutting there while Connor makes a low and sweet noise right there in Hank’s ear.

Hank throws an arm out to his left and blindly opens the bedside table drawer, the contents inside rattling around until he comes back up with the bottle he was looking for. The cap pops off and Connor whines again, squeezing his legs around Hank’s thigh as he tries to scoot up for more leverage.

“I’ve got you, baby,” Hank murmurs, reaching down first to push Connor’s loose sweats over the curve of his ass until they’re bunched around his hips. He slicks his hand up and then traces the cleft between Connor’s cheeks down to that tight little hole, rubbing his fingertip there against the muscle until Connor gasps and rocks back against his hand.

“Oh fuck, please,” Connor hisses, practically crawling up Hank now if it means those fingers will go where he wants them to. “Please, Hank.”

“Nice and easy,” Hank rumbles, squeezing the meat of Connor’s ass with his other hand just as he presses the first finger in. Connor keens like he’s been shot and bucks, the sound of it going straight to the tip of Hank’s cock like a winning ring on a high striker bell.

“Give me another,” Connor whines as he wriggles, already burning up from the inside out, and when Hank obliges him and adds a second slick finger he rides back against his hand and God help Hank, begs for more.

“You’re gonna kill me, kid,” Hank laughs, sliding a palm up and down the lumbar curve of Connor’s spine like he’s quieting a flighty horse. “Should’ve known you were this insatiable.”

He spreads his fingers to loosen up the tightness a little more and Connor just takes it in stride, moaning where his mouth is pressed in an endless kiss against Hank’s shoulder. It goes on like that in some thick haze of the most visceral fever dream Hank’s ever had, laying here in his own goddamn bed with a slim little whip of a gorgeous man jammed on his fingers, hell-bent on working them both into a frenzy.

Connor starts getting restless after the third finger, drooling on Hank’s shoulder as he fucks himself back on his hand, mindlessly rocking with two fistfuls of sheet and his hair plastered to his forehead. They’ve kicked the heavier blankets down to the foot of the bed and Hank’s decided for himself and his straining cock both that this is enough, it’ll have to do for now, and pulls his fingers from Connor’s hole with a lewd sound.

He eases Connor over onto his side and shifts away for a moment, digging around in the bedside drawer again, and comes back with a condom. Connor watches, mesmerized, as Hank opens the wrapper and sits on the edge of the bed long enough to kick his pajama pants into the floor and roll it down the length of his cock.  Then he’s back and helping Connor shimmy out of his, pressing a tickling kiss to his belly as he pulls them down Connor’s legs and tosses them toward the foot of the mattress.

They lay there side by side for a moment, watching each other through the lamplight with gently labored breaths. Connor looks down at Hank’s scarred and inked body, sleepy but invigorated with warmth all at once at the sight, and wants so desperately to be pressed up under his heavy bulk again, held down and pinned in place.

“What do you want?” Hank asks, not for the first time tonight, leaning over Connor as he reaches up to touch the side of his face with so much gentleness that Connor nearly breaks and lets out a sob on the spot.

“Just—hold me,” Connor whispers, and can’t quite manage the rest even as he takes Hank’s arm and holds him there with the intent to lock his body in place. _Use me. Keep me. Love me._ “Like this.”

And so Hank does despite his own shaking hands, taking one of Connor’s knees and pulling it up before slotting his hips there in the open cradle between Connor’s thighs. Hank fists his cock with another handful of slick and lines up but doesn’t move any further yet, leaning close to find Connor’s lips for a chaste brush of a kiss.

“Breathe,” he says softly, voice frayed with nerves and maybe a touch of something else Connor can’t place just yet. Connor’s eyes find his and their gaze holds steady, unbroken even as Hank finally takes his cock and pushes into the tight heat of Connor’s body.

Connor’s lips part open in a little gasp that wrenches itself out of his chest, eyelashes fluttering as Hank fills him up to the hilt. They lie wrapped around each other in a loose lover’s knot, twisted on top of the sheets, Hank’s grip on Connor’s thigh tight enough to leave five perfect violets sprung into bloom there.

“You’re doing so good, sweetheart,” he rasps, rolling his hips forward for that first shallow thrust, sweet enough that it makes Connor’s eyes burn and Hank’s body shudder. “Oh fuck, Connor.”

The quiet simplicity of this moment is what makes it perfect, Connor thinks. Hank’s enveloping warmth, his smell, the way the gap between his teeth briefly shines when his nose skims Connor’s face as soft as the tip of a feather, their eyes catching again while they rock together without hurry. Secreted away in this small house somewhere between the witching hour and dawn. It’s an act not done so much in the pursuit of worldly pleasure, but in the breaking down of a barrier between two separate bodies who needed that final inch of impossible closeness. Connor whispers Hank’s name like a prayer and maybe it is one, spoken out into the universe for the bent ear of anyone listening.

And how Hank knows what Connor wants before he asks there’s no real telling, but he shifts without a word and pulls away long enough to push Connor’s other leg back, baring the tight curve of his ass and empty hole before sliding right back in like he never left. Hank’s thighs slot in against Connor’s as he lets some of his weight pin his lover down into to the groaning mattress, leaning in close enough that Connor’s cock is pressed into his belly by the bulk of Hank’s stomach.

They collide in another messy kiss and Connor moans outright against Hank’s lips when he moves again, hands scrabbling up his back to keep him close. The balmy heat thrumming deep in his pelvis flares and takes him by surprise, making him cry out in the stillness of Hank’s bedroom. When a tear beads and falls into Connor’s hairline Hank only kisses the bruised corner of his eye and runs his fingers through dark waves, shushing him gently.

“Know I hate to see you cry, sweet boy,” he murmurs, throat full of something between devotion and grief now himself, and then Connor sobs. “You wanna take a breather?”

“No,” Connor says, crying freely now. He slides one of his thighs out from under Hank so he can wrap it around his hips, drawing him in closer, deeper. “Stay here with me.”

The crow’s feet around Hank’s eyes tighten despite the softness there and he presses his face against Connor’s neck, whispering sweet nothings there. One big hand comes around to palm under Connor’s ass for leverage as he thrusts in again, moving both of them along in an endless, easy tide.

It’s not enough to see the stars wheel around the sun but it’s what they need. Connor’s tears dry in salty tracks on his cheeks and he laughs, delighted and overwhelmed when Hank’s hand finally wraps around his cock, one heel sliding down the small of Hank’s back as he bucks up into his fist. He’s filled to the brim in too many ways to count, heart beating something vivid and joyous in his chest while Hank calls his name and fucks him long and deep as the means toward an end.

And when it comes it washes like a warm wave over the both of them, bleeding through Hank’s body while Connor whimpers against his mouth and clenches around him with a fluttering kind of heat, letting Hank rock and ease them through the rest of it. They fall into each other, softly panting and sleepy-spent, content to do nothing at all but bask in the light of something made.

Hank slips free from Connor’s body with a groan and kisses him sweetly in a silent promise before rolling to the side of the bed, tying a knot in the condom and getting up to walk stark naked to the bathroom down the hall. Connor watches him go from under the weight of his own lashes and reaches down between his own legs to touch the place where they’d been joined together, wincing but satisfied with the sting’s swift reminder. The clock on the bedside table reads ten past four o’clock in the morning and Connor remembers, distantly, that it’s Halloween.

When Hank returns he’s carrying two damp cloths, one he uses to quickly wipe down Connor’s belly and the other he presses more tenderly around his eyes, erasing tear tracks and the light sheen of sweat from Connor’s brow.

“Here,” he says, giving the cloth to Connor when he’s done, sinking down on the edge of the bed and looking away just long enough for Connor to clean up himself a little more thoroughly. Hank drapes them over the wastebasket for later and climbs back into bed, immediately pulling Connor close now that the night chill is starting to replace the heat from before.

He shivers a little and reaches down to yank the covers up over them before doing a slow double take, eyes drawn right to the peculiar wash of pink, white, and soft yellow delicately inked on Connor’s right hip.

Hank pauses and leans in for a closer look, straining to really make out the tattoo without his glasses. He touches it with care, tracing around the outside with the tip of a finger while Connor watches on.

The tattoo there is barely more than the faintest rendering of watercolor petals and if Hank didn’t know better he might mistake it for a hickey sucked into the milky white of Connor’s skin. He passes a bolder thumb over it and feels his heartbeat stutter once, rapidly, in his chest when he thinks he knows what he’s looking at. “Is that a…?”

“Apple blossom,” Connor says, reaching down to touch the flower there between the spread of Hank’s fingers, a self-conscious movement like he’s waiting for Hank to smirk or laugh. “For my parents.”

“Oh Christ,” Hank says, dizzy in an instant, covering the bloom with his hand as if to protect it. “Oh fuck.”

“What?” Connor says in vague alarm, sitting up further. “Hank.”

“It’s nothing,” Hank croaks, squeezing his eyes shut tight, willing himself not to fucking cry right now, not after everything else. “Nothing bad, baby.” That’s not a lie, but he doesn’t know if he can tell the whole truth yet. “I—I’m just so fucking glad you’re here, Con.”

“Me too,” Connor says softly, sitting up to lean into Hank’s side, dropping a kiss in the center of the cyclical serpent on his shoulder.

Later, when they’ve slept and rested well into the morning, Hank will take that apple blossom in his mouth and make it his, mark Connor there, bite a tender bruise into the pale flesh before they make love and then tell him again about the orchard.

It isn’t there to visit anymore, at least not in the physical sense, but here is Hank’s reminder of the springtime there, right here in his arms, as real and alive as anything.  
  


* * *  
  


The pumpkin gets carved, crude and comically crooked when it’s done, but with a smiling face that grins by the front door all the same. Hank swears off answering the door for trick-or-treaters all night but Connor walks down to the jiffy store three blocks away with Sumo leading the way and buys a cheap bag of candy and a few packets of M&M’s before tossing them into a popcorn bowl and leaving it all on the stoop with a handwritten note: _one per ghoul, Happy Halloween :)_  
  
Hank’s cell phone rings in the early evening, buzzing there on the coffee table next to where his socked feet are propped up and crossed at the ankle. Connor stirs against his chest at the sound and reaches down to bring the phone back, passing it into Hank’s hand and waiting while he answers on the fourth ring.

“Hey Jeff,” he says, walking two idle fingers up Connor’s forearm while he listens to Fowler on the other end. “Yeah, we’re at the house. No Halloween stuff going on here, I’m too old for all that shit. You got the grandkids later tonight?”

Connor nestles back into the crook between Hank’s side and arm and watches the TV without paying any real attention, straining to make out Fowler’s side of the conversation beyond the odd stray syllable or word.

“Baton Rouge?” Hank grunts, reaching up to scratch through his beard. “I thought that haul was headed out for Oklahoma. Oh—I mean, yeah, that’s fine. Cut up through Texas and hit both. Connor would ride along with me either way, obviously.”

Connor turns his head at that and Hank catches the corner of his eye, winking slowly while he presses his tongue into the little space between his teeth. “What time do you want to hitch and load? Good goddamn that’s fucking early, but I guess we’ll be there. Uh-huh. Be nice to see some warmer weather down south for a minute.”

When Hank sputters without warning and kicks a stack of magazines off the coffee table that land next to Sumo’s head, Connor’s eyes widen while his body prepares for the worst. “Reed said _what?!_ ”

“Fuck him,” Hank grumbles, though Connor can see he’s trying to bite back a wicked sort of smile. “Don’t let that get around, Jeff, for Christ’s sake—I’ve got a reputation to uphold. See you bright and early.”

Hank disconnects and drops his phone against his chest with a huff. “You ever been to Louisiana before?” he asks.

“Not yet,” Connor says, and then gently prods Hank in the gut. “What did Reed say?”

“He apparently started running his mouth when he caught wind of you snagging a pre-hire letter from the bossman,” Hank says with a pointed look. “Which, by the way, hate to spoil the surprise, but it seems some congratulations are in order.”

It takes a long moment for that to dawn on Connor. “Oh my God,” he says, nearly grabbing a handful of Hank’s chest hair in surprise. “But he said…he told me—!”

“Guess he got to thinking on it and wants you to stick around,” Hank says with a smile, leaning forward to leave a peck on the flushed tip of Connor’s nose. “I probably could’ve told you that from the get-go, though, so maybe I’m not as surprised.”

“Anyway,” Hank continues while Connor gapes at him with a dopey grin, “Reed was spouting off some nonsense about Fowler running a charity. Says he should rename the company _Eighteen Wheelers for Old Men and Orphans_.”

Connor makes a sour face and snorts, narrowing his eyes. “That’s not even any good.”

“You expect any real creativity from a guy like Gavin?” Hank says with a snort. “Do him one better.”

Connor thinks for a moment, chewing the corner of his lip. “Eighteen wheelers for the wayward and weary.”

“Ouch,” Hank says with a laugh. “Too close to home.”

“Eighteen wheels on a prayer and a dime,” Connor tries again with a silly smirk.

“Eighteen wheels rain or fuckin’ shine,” Hank adds with a waggle of his eyebrows, spinning off the rhyme.

“Eighteen wheels on an uphill climb,” Connor says without really thinking, and this time Hank blinks.

“Huh,” he says, turning that one over in his head as he taps out the eight rounded syllables on Connor’s thigh. “Got a certain ring to it, you think?”

“Seems thematically appropriate,” Connor says, yelping and ducking his head to laugh when Hank huffs and pinches his ass.

Sumo looks up from where he’s still sprawled on the floor, long in the face but with his tail happily thumping on the hardwood. Hank winks at him and then looks back to Connor, posing his next question. “Uphill to where?”

“I don’t know,” Connor says with a little shrug, snuggling back against Hank’s side with a content sigh. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Wherever you want to go.”

Hank only nods and splays a warm hand around the curve of Connor’s hip, keeping him held close as he thinks about the long but certain road stretched ahead of them. “I sure do like the sound of that.”  
  
  
  
  
Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (If I royally fucked up anything about driving stick in a semi or fingering yourself, lmao, I am so sorry. I drive an automatic. Cough.)
> 
> A big s/o to Nobo for helping nail down some of Hank's tattoo symbolism with regards to the Cole tribute piece (look up all those flower meanings.....go on. Do it.). An even bigger s/o to the lovely Pohjanneito for not only inspiring me to write this story at all with the GORGEOUS art linked in the beginning, but also being kind enough to help me along the entire way as a dedicated beta reader. This writing experience has brought so many kind and talented people into my life ❤
> 
> At the expense of yet another trucker pun, his has been the most fulfilling ride & I’m so incredibly thankful this many of you hung around for the long haul. The feedback and support I got along the way has been truly overwhelming—but in the absolute best way possible. Whether you left comments, made art, sent me a message, or even screamed at me on tumblr or twitter, you were part of this experience with me and made it all the more worthwhile. Thank you! 
> 
> This isn’t the end of the road for these boys; I have a little coda planned that takes place in Las Vegas. Not sure when that’s going to debut or if anything else will come before or after it, but keep an eye out on my social pages and I’ll let you know when something’s coming down the pipeline :)


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